Why Attention Matters

In 2000, the US presidency came down to 537 votes in the Sunshine State.

Eight years later, a fleeting filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate and the dream of universal health care became possible thanks to 312 voters in Minnesota. 

Every vote counts in this era of hypercompetitive elections. And winning starts with ensuring our messages are heard and seen.

Attention is essential to the effectiveness of paid media, especially at a time of unprecedented noise and fragmentation. 

Research from Dr. Karen Nelson-Field shows that 85% of digital ads fail to earn more than 2.5 seconds of attention, a baseline threshold for ads to begin to gain memory share with viewers. And as Dr. Augustine Fou has proven, bot traffic isn’t real traffic.

Kantar recently conducted the largest-ever global study of media effectiveness covering 1,107 media campaigns across 557 brands and more than $12B in spend. They found that there is no one “perfect” media mix but there are better ways to plan. 

Every campaign has different contexts and goals. But how we plan affects outcomes across the funnel — Kantar’s research shows that campaigns with an optimal media mix can be 2.6x more effective. That’s where the art meets the science. 

Brand campaigns are about building memories and associations, starting with the “who” and the “why.” And few brand campaigns have as high stakes as electoral ones.

That’s why Persuasion & Pixels employs a unique blend of expertise, capabilities, and partnerships to help solve the “when and where” and “what works” of successful ad campaigns.

We don’t just target attention, we can help place your ads to the persuadable voters who aren’t paying attention. The voters who aren’t following the latest cable news outrage or scrolling social media to debate poll crosstabs late at night.  The voters who decide elections.

You know in your gut that not all ad impressions are equal. Research confirms your intuition. An ad buried on a page cluttered with other ads captures less active attention than an unskippable impression on the biggest screen in the house.

Millions of low-quality impressions are digital empty calories that don’t achieve your goals. Does a video ad that’s barely seen and isn’t heard even make an impression? And do you know where your ads are running?

Just because you paid for an ad impression doesn’t mean a voter paid attention to your ad. 

In short, the best-produced ads that don’t reach the right audiences in the right places are what some in the industry call cathedrals in the desert. 

Your message, a message you dedicated energy and resources to developing, deserves to be heard. And you shouldn’t lose because your beautifully produced cathedrals were barely seen.

Are you still reading this page? If you are, let’s find a time to talk.

Dall-E (generative AI) prompt, 1/6/2024. “A diverse group of American voters, surrounded by distractions like TV screens, laptop screens, cell phone screens, and tablet screens, living busy lives”