Lumen CEO Mike Follett discusses why attention metrics in advertising provide a truer read of media quality, and how they help advertisers compare every screen fairly.
The thing about advertising is that unless someone pays attention, it’s totally useless. There’s nothing more expensive than spending money on an ad that no one looks at.
Lumen Research CEO, Mike Follett, captures a fundamental limitation of legacy digital media buying: viewability confirms an ad had the technical opportunity to be seen, but reveals nothing about whether a human eye actually registered it. As inventory expands across fragmented channels, attention metrics in advertising have become one of the most useful – but not fully understood – ways to evaluate media quality.
As part of our Cut Through the Noise series, Mike and Caroline Hugonenc, SVP of Insights and Data at Teads, share their perspectives on how attention differs between a CTV screen and a mobile feed, and why the next step for media planners is understanding how much attention is enough to drive a business outcome.
Since 2022, Teads has partnered with Lumen to make attention a practical and necessary part of media buying, integrating its measurement into Teads Ad Manager and extending that partnership to CTV HomeScreen environments across the US, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM.
Advertisers are increasingly finding value in attention to measure effective advertising: around half of advertisers and 60% of agencies now track attention metrics, and last November theInteractive Advertising Bureau (IAB), in collaboration with the Media Rating Council (MRC) finalized the industry’s first attention measurement guidelines. For brands running an omnichannel advertising strategy, viewability shows an ad could be seen. Attention measurement shows whether it was seen, for how many seconds, and how that attention relates to lower-funnel outcomes.
Understanding Attention Across CTV and Web
Measuring attention in advertising becomes most useful when a plan spans several screens. Mike’s view is straightforward: every impression should be judged by how much real human attention it captures, because a CTV impression and a mobile impression are counted the same way despite behaving very differently.
Lumen’s eye-tracking data reveals that roughly 80 to 90% of ads on a TV screen get noticed, largely because the ad fills the whole screen. Mobile ads, by contrast, are engineered for rapid scrolling.
Time adds a second layer:
- The Living Room Screen: A viewer might look at a 30-second CTV ad for 16 or 17 attentive seconds.
- The Personal Screen: A noticed mobile ad typically earns 2 to 3 seconds of eye contact.
The longer people spend with an ad, the more likely they are to remember it, and therefore, act on it. Because human memory retention scales directly with exposure time, treating these two impressions as equal in a media mix model distorts campaign ROI.
As Caroline points out, advertisers are among the first to ask for attention measurement on CTV to validate higher CPMs, as the big screen costs more and buyers want an objective way to see what that premium delivers. In Mike’s view, CTV’s price reflects how much attention it generates and how efficiently it does so. Our CTV attention measurement with Lumen, starting with CTV HomeScreen, puts that attention in front of buyers.
As advertisers strive to meaningfully connect with audiences across a fragmented CTV landscape, HomeScreen ads present a new frontier. The initial screen that viewers see can also be the most impactful — turning passive discovery into active engagement and measurable brand outcomes.
How Media Environments Turn Attention Into Memory
More attention does not automatically mean proportionally better results. Lumen’s global research highlights a critical nuance: two seconds of attention in one media environment will not necessarily drive the same memory retention or sales as two seconds in another.
Non-skippable video formats can generate substantial attention, but Lumen’s findings suggest that environments where people deliberately choose to consume content can be more efficient at turning that attention into brand equity.
For planners, the lesson is clear: evaluate attention metrics alongside performance outcomes. The goal is not simply to maximize time spent looking at an ad, but to understand what that attention achieves.
Attention-Based Media Planning: Determining “How Much Is Enough”
The most significant operational shift in the attention economy is moving from post-campaign verification to pre-bid attention optimization.
If attention data shows that one site or channel consistently outperforms another, media teams can act on that before the next campaign begins. Within Teads Ad Manager, advertisers can buy media on the basis of the attention they’re likely to get, so attention metrics in advertising shape the plan before launch as well as the report afterward.
The required volume of attention changes depending on brand maturity and target market. Caroline and Mike point to their joint work with Carlsberg to illustrate this dynamic:
- Mature Markets (Denmark): As an established market leader, a brief glimpse of Carlsberg’s distinct green branding is enough to activate mental availability.
- Growth Markets (Vietnam): As a premium challenger brand, driving product consideration requires far more attention to educate consumers and justify price premiums. . In Denmark, where it’s a household name, a glimpse of the green branding goes a long way. In Vietnam, where it’s a premium imported beer, it takes far more attention to persuade someone to buy.
The crucial word is “enough.” How much attention is enough per ad, per medium? And that’s what’s so interesting about what’s happening at Teads. You’re the only company that has built these attention thresholds into the buying process. It’s a unique capability that lets you act on attention data and represent the differences between media as well.
Looking Ahead
The second dimension of “enough,” in Mike’s view, is attention that builds up over time. In a recent research across 270 cross-media campaigns, Lumen discovered that a median of 47 seconds of cumulative attention was needed for purchase intent, built across touchpoints.
The median threshold of cumulative attention required to drive statistically significant shifts in purchase intent across cross-media flights.
Source: Lumen Research Meta-Analysis (270 Cross-Media Campaigns)
Single exposures rarely close a sale on their own. The true potential of attention-based advertising belongs to platforms that can deduplicate reach, manage cross-screen frequency, and aggregate the attention and brand outcomes an advertiser secures across CTV, mobile, and desktop environments.
Advertising never works on the basis of a single impression. It’s always multiple impressions adding up over time that make the difference, and crucially, they add up across media.
Ready to plan with attention across every screen on a single omnichannel platform?
Get in touch to explore our attention and CTV solutions.