Dentsu upgrades Effective Attention technology to maximise audience attention and curb waste

One year on from dentsu UK&I’s launch of its Effective Attention technology, which streamlines brands’ audience attention targeting to maximise effect, the tool is evolving to include denstu’s media carbon calculator data.

The addition of the media carbon calculator data is aimed at helping brands to better understand the carbon impact of their digital advertising campaigns.

Exclusive to dentsu clients, the tool reads the live ad and environmental characteristics of an impression to estimate the likely amount of attention paid to it by the viewer, and whether that volume of attention is sufficient to drive effect.

This will enable marketers to evaluate data and optimise their inventories towards maximum campaign effectiveness in real time.

Hamish Nicklin, CEO of Media at dentsu UK&I said: "Expending energy on something that won't be seen is an obvious waste, but we've gone a step further than simply calculating the carbon cost of attention to understand the carbon contribution associated with the actual effect of that attention. This is based on our knowledge that not all attention is equal and to maximise positive outcomes for brands and society.”

Augmenting Effective Attention

The Effective Attention tech is being augmented for the first time and will feature a dashboard to help brands better understand the relationship between ‘carbon’ and ‘effect’ with regard to the true cost of delivering effective attention with the addition of an extra signal to help clients track and measure against their carbon budget.

This new view is powered by dentsu partner and telecommunications company Lumen – with hopes of better enabling teams to understand how to maximise their attention outcomes while minimising their impact on the planet.

Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen, said: “Lumen is really pleased to partner with dentsu to expose this important new view into the carbon cost of cognition for brands. It’s broader in scope and deeper in value than anything else out there, leveraging everything that dentsu has learned about the connection between attention and outcomes from five years of the Attention Economy programme."

According to dentsu, the augmentation of Effective Attention to include this new integration of carbon measurement is part of Phase III of dentsu’s journey toward media decarbonisation.