Nerd Alert: To ESOV and Beyond

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Architects – "Nerd Alert: To ESOV and Beyond"

Episode Details:

• Title: Nerd Alert: To ESOV and Beyond
• Host: Lana Jasper
• Co-Host: Rob DeMars
• Release Date: June 5, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Marketing Architects, hosts Lana Jasper and Rob DeMars dive deep into the intricacies of advertising effectiveness, focusing on a pivotal study titled "Attention and Effectiveness to ESOV and Beyond Part 2" by Robert Britten and Peter Field. The discussion centers around how attention metrics can bridge the gap between creative strength, media placement, and tangible business outcomes.

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Understanding the Study: Attention and Effectiveness to ESOV and Beyond Part 2

Key Points:

• Research Team: Robert Britten and Peter Field, collaborating with Karen Nelson Field and her team at Amplified Intelligence.
• Methodology: Analyzed 39 Australian FE case studies using advanced eye-tracking technology on YouTube to measure both active and passive attention.
• Objective: To move beyond the traditional share of voice model by integrating attention metrics to better understand and enhance advertising effectiveness.

Notable Insight:

• Active vs. Passive Attention: Active attention refers to deliberate viewing of an advertisement, while passive attention involves peripheral vision engagement.

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Good Creative vs. Good Media

Discussion Highlights:

• Rob DeMars’ Perspective:

  • "Neither. And I don't think it's a true or false question. I think it's more nuanced than that." (01:05)
  • Emphasizes that good media can elevate mediocre creative, but truly remarkable creative can slightly enhance media performance.

• Lana Jasper’s Counterpoint:

  • Suggests the study might present findings that refine or challenge Rob's perspective.

Study's Contribution:

• Demonstrates that not all impressions are created equal, highlighting significant variability in attention across different platforms.
• Implication: Marketers might be overpaying for media that appears efficient on paper but underperforms in delivering actual attention.

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Attention Metrics and Platform Variability

Key Findings:

• Attention Elasticity: High elasticity platforms amplify creative strength, ensuring good creative receives more attention and poor creative is ignored faster.
• Platform Impact: Two equally strong ads can perform differently based on the media platforms they are placed on, underscoring the importance of strategic media placement.

Rob's Insights:

• Recognizes a growing appreciation among marketers for adapting creative strategies per channel.
• Highlights a gap in how attention metrics are valued compared to creative adaptations.

Lana’s Commentary:

• Points out that attention serves as a gatekeeper to advertising effectiveness, influencing brand choice, memory, and mental availability.

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The Power of Attention in Advertising

Critical Statistics:

• Active Attention Threshold: "Rob was basically spot on. Human beings, we need at least 2.5 seconds of active attention before we start to remember an ad." (05:12)
• Issue Highlighted: "85% of video ads don't even reach that threshold. That means that most ads aren't just ineffective, they're invisible." (06:05)

Analogy Used:

• Rob DeMars compares attention to oxygen for a spark: "If your campaign is a spark, attention is the oxygen. You can strike as many matches as you want, but if you do it in a vacuum on a platform where no one's really paying attention, nothing's going to ignite." (09:10)

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Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) and Its Relevance

Lana Jasper’s Explanation:

• ESOV Principle: "If your brand's voice is louder than your market share, you grow." (07:15)
• Study Confirmation: Positive ESOV enhances campaign effectiveness across platforms, especially when invested in high-attention media.
• Caution: Investing in low-attention platforms may drain creative impact, leading to underperformance despite higher media spend.

Rob DeMars’ Endorsement:

• "I would fear for my safety if I didn't say I'm a huge believer in ESOV." (08:31)
• Reiterates the importance of ESOV in achieving market share gains and effective marketing mix allocation.

Addressing Objections:

• Acknowledges concerns about the accuracy of tools measuring share of voice or market share but maintains that relative directional insights remain valuable.

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Strategic Implications for Marketers

Key Takeaways:

• Media Planning: Emphasize not just the cost of media but the quality of attention it garners.
• Creative Allocation: Place high-quality creative on high-attention platforms to maximize effectiveness.
• Performance Evaluation: Avoid letting results from low-attention media skew overall marketing strategies.

Rob’s Strategic Insight:

• Highlights the importance of aligning attention metrics with marketing objectives, comparing different types of attention (e.g., TikTok vs. television) to strategic goals.

Lana’s Final Thoughts:

• Encourages marketers to use attention metrics to reframe results and make informed investment decisions without solely relying on traditional channel performance indicators.

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Conclusion

Lana Jasper and Rob DeMars wrap up the episode by emphasizing the critical role of attention in advertising effectiveness. By integrating attention metrics into marketing strategies, brands can ensure their creative efforts are not only seen but also remembered and acted upon. The discussion reinforces the enduring relevance of ESOV, particularly when combined with strategic media placement that prioritizes high-attention platforms.

Closing Analogy:

• "Attention is not just a metric, Rob. It's the air your message needs to survive." (09:10)

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Connect with The Marketing Architects:

• LinkedIn: Marketing Architects
• Feedback: Leave a review if you enjoyed the podcast!
• Credits: Special thanks to Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show.

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This summary captures the essence of the episode, providing an in-depth look at the interplay between attention metrics, creative quality, and media placement in driving advertising effectiveness. Listeners gain valuable insights into optimizing their marketing strategies to build revenue through informed, research-backed approaches.

Transcript

[Rob DeMars]

Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?

[Lana Jasper]

Yes, exactly. What a bunch of nerds.

[Rob DeMars]

Nerd alert.

[Lana Jasper]

Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Lana Jasper. I'm on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects. And I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[Rob DeMars]

Hi, Elena.

[Lana Jasper]

Hello. We are back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, understandable language for Rob and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?

[Rob DeMars]

Oh, if there was a tariff on being nerds, our costs just went up 200%. Let's do this.

[Lana Jasper]

Let's do this. As always, we'll link the research we cover in the episode notes. This week I read a study titled Attention and Effectiveness to ESOV and Beyond Part 2 by Robert Britten and Peter Field. But before I get too far, Rob, I wanted to ask you this. True or false? Good creative can overcome bad media?

[Rob DeMars]

Neither. And I don't think it's a true or false question. I think it's more nuanced than that. Personally. I think, you know, the inverse is definitely true, that good media can often lift bad creative. You can have a forgettable ad, but if it's well placed, timed and with enough impressions, it can get through. I think that creative also has its own kind of gravity where, you know, if it's truly remarkable or emotionally resonant, that it can at least help the media perform slightly better. So that's my two cents. Okay, tell me I'm wrong. I'm probably wrong. I don't surveys.

[Lana Jasper]

I don't think you're wrong. I think that's a fair opinion. And this study might change your mind slightly.

[Rob DeMars]

I'm open. My brain is open.

[Lana Jasper]

Well, we are talking about attention today and this is one of the most comprehensive studies on how attention works in advertising, which is still a newer concept, I'd say, but what it really talks about is how attention doesn't work the way the most marketers think. Robert Britton and Peter Field. They teamed up with Karen Nelson Field and her team at Amplified Intelligence. They're probably who we all know as the attention experts and they wanted to go beyond the old share of voice model and show how attention metrics can bridge this gap and between creative strength, media placement and real business outcomes. The study is based on 39 Australian FE case studies. Each ad was tested using advanced eye tracking tech on YouTube and they tracked both active and passive attention. So basically how many seconds did people actually look at the ads? But then they went a step further. They connected that attention data to how each campaign performed in market and how mediaspend was allocated. And here's what they found first. Now, not all impressions are created equal. A media impression is not a media impression is not a media impression. You can buy the same number of impressions on two different platforms, say YouTube and Meta, but the number of people who actually look at your ad, remember it and take action varies a whole lot. That's one of the key ideas in this report. Attention varies massively by platform and that variability isn't priced in meaning. Often marketers us are overpaying for media that might look efficient on paper but underperforms in real life. Rob, do you think this conversation about how attention varies by platform, do you think this is a common one within marketing teams? Are we consistently looking at not just the price of media but also the attention it delivers?

[Rob DeMars]

Gosh, it's a great nuance because I do think marketers are have a growing appreciation that each channel needs to behave differently from a creative standpoint. Obviously a 30 second TV spot is different than YouTube. Pre roll is different than a TikTok swipe. And so people are spending more time trying to reimagine what the creative looks and sounds like by channel and not just simply repurpose it. But it's a fair question to go. Do we then weigh the attention metric differently? And that I haven't heard as much about. I think there's been a lot of focus on how we can all change the creative, but how we value the attention it drives, it doesn't. That feels like there's definitely a lot of room for more conversation there.

[Lana Jasper]

Yeah, I agree. It feels like the way this comes into conversation is looking at overarching results and seeing oh, a dollar spent here doesn't translate into the same business result as a dollar spent there. But I wonder how much attention is coming up when you're actually media planning versus just focusing on kind of those short term metrics associated with each platform. One thing I want to talk about is just like why does attention matter in general? Which already we've made clear. But it really is this gatekeeper to effectiveness. And the study it breaks down attention into two different types. One is active attention. So that's somebody looking just directly at your advertisement. Passive attention is when it's in our peripheral vision. And they found that active attention is tied directly to results like brand Choice, memory and mental availability. And they found something else that's important. Rob, let me ask you this question. I think I've asked you this before actually, in a NERG alert, but how many seconds do you think we need to see an ad for it to make it into our memory?

[Rob DeMars]

Two seconds.

[Lana Jasper]

Yeah.

[Rob DeMars]

Did you hear that?

[Lana Jasper]

Did I hear that?

[Rob DeMars]

Did you hear what I just said? Two seconds? Yeah, yeah. So then you made my point. You remembered it.

[Lana Jasper]

Oh, my gosh.

[Rob DeMars]

Two seconds.

[Lana Jasper]

I don't know if that connects. It's the way he wanted to. It's actually 2.5 seconds that didn't work.

[Rob DeMars]

I think I was stuck on the peripheral vision thing when you were. I just learned that over the weekend that goats have 365 degree peripheral vision. Did you know that?

[Lana Jasper]

That's scary for some reason.

[Rob DeMars]

I know. Sorry, I'm off track. I just was thinking of goats when you said that. So two seconds.

[Lana Jasper]

Yeah, that's cool. Actually. I wish I had 360 degree peripheral vision. Think about all the ads I could consume.

[Rob DeMars]

They have square pupils. I was at the zoo and I was with ChatGPT and I was talking about.

[Lana Jasper]

I was going to say, did chatgpt tell you this? Because I'm not sure if that's all.

[Rob DeMars]

That was so good. It was so good.

[Lana Jasper]

It just knows what makes you happy. It's like, let's tell them they have a story.

[Rob DeMars]

Very entertaining. If nothing else made the zoo a lot more entertaining.

[Lana Jasper]

Oh my gosh. All right, so Rob was basically spot on. Human beings, we need at least 2.5 seconds of active attention before we start to remember an ad. That's just the floor, the minimum. Unfortunately, 85% of video ads don't even reach that threshold. That means that most ads aren't just ineffective, they're invisible. Good creative only works when people see it. But now things got a little more interesting. Britain and Field, they show that even within these award winning campaigns, attention levels varied not just because of the creative, but because of where the creative was placed. So some media platforms have what the study calls attention elasticity, which means on high elasticity platforms, good creative gets seen for longer and bad creative gets ignored faster. So creative strength is amplified on the right platforms and wasted on the wrong ones. In fact, two ads that tested equally strong in isolation performed very differently at scale because one ran on mostly low attention platforms while the other was backed by high attention media. Which is sad to think about. Like you could have a great advertisement and think it's an underperformer because of where you're placing it, which is attractive.

[Rob DeMars]

Sucks.

[Lana Jasper]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about share voice, specifically excess share of voice or esav, which is a principle I love a whole lot. And it's pretty simple. If your brand's voice is louder than your market share, you grow. This paper confirms that ESOV still works, which is what we found too. In fact, a positive ESOV improves campaign effectiveness regardless of the platform. So yes, you should still outspend your market share. But the catch is ESOV works best when your money is going to high attention media. If you're investing more, but spending it on cheap, low attention platforms, you're leaving a ton of value on the table. I think we found this, Rob, when we do ESOB analysis for clients, if you are spending more but you're not seeing market share gains, that's typically because your marketing mix is wrong and you might be investing in a lot of low attention platforms. So you've hypothetically got this money out there, but the impressions aren't really being seen. But on the flip side, if you place Grace Creative on high attention platforms and you're investing heavily, that's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck, the biggest lift in brand metrics and what we all care about, the biggest lift in business outcomes. So, Rob, we recently had a whole podcast episode with our friend Dan Cleveland related to esov, because it can be kind of a debated topic, but how do you feel about it as a marketing principle? After we've gone through all of that, do you think that it's still relevant?

[Rob DeMars]

I would fear for my safety if I didn't say I'm a huge believer in esav, because as an agency, we literally preach ESAV all the time, to the point where we just finished marketing effectiveness training thanks to Elena and Elena's team and just continuing to unpack the principles of esav. So absolutely. And I say that both seriously and jokingly, like we absolutely are believers in it. I'm a believer in it. It makes absolute sense. Obviously not just because we're in television, and television is a huge lever for that. It just shows. It just plays out in the results too. And, and we love our results.

[Lana Jasper]

One of the biggest objections I hear to ESOB analysis is the tools are not accurate in calculating share of voice or market share, which is true, but they're inaccurate for everybody. So even if it's wrong, like the ending calculation is probably still directional. But to wrap us up here, the headline of this study is really the most interesting finding in the report, which is campaigns that invested in lower attention platforms underperformed so significantly that the researchers said this. The evidence suggests those platforms are not cheap enough. Even with their low CPMs. The lost impact means they aren't delivering the value we assume. You might think you're saving money, but you're really doing is draining creative impact and effectiveness. And now for our robgpt. If your campaign is a spark, attention is the oxygen. You can strike as many matches as you want, but if you do it in a vacuum on a platform where no one's really paying attention, nothing's going to ignite. But bring that spark into the right conditions with enough oxygen and the right fuel and you've got a fire that not only lights up your brand, but can spread fast. So attention is not just a metric, Rob. It's the air your message needs to survive.

[Rob DeMars]

I like that. I think ChatGPTs used that one before for something else for one of our previous episodes. But I do like that one. I think that's good.

[Lana Jasper]

Makes a lot of sense. If it's not oxygen and fire, it's gardening or food. Usually with ChatGPT. Great. Yeah, I just, I love that study. I think anything like attention I think is so interesting. And I know we're a TV agency not to plug tv, but it is one of those platforms where attention quality is just so much higher.

[Rob DeMars]

I appreciate the nuance. We do often talk about, oh, what do we need to do to change the particular piece of creative by channel. But we don't really give it the attention it needs on attention. Okay, well, not all attention is created equal. Um, that's interesting.

[Lana Jasper]

That's a great point. Like, hey, your creative isn't failing. Where you're putting it is causing any creative to fail. Maybe so yeah, trying to determine performance when you're only invested in low attention media is going to be pretty tricky.

[Rob DeMars]

Well also, what is that attention like? If you think of attention as a deliverable. Right. It's okay to have different deliverables. There's different flavors of ice cream. Right. So what is the attention of a TikTok view versus the attention of a television view? They're neither is better or worse. It's what is your strategy and which attention metric makes the most sense for what your objectives are.

[Lana Jasper]

That's a great point. This doesn't mean you should only go invest in TV because it has a high attention metric. It means acknowledging it and maybe making certain decisions based on results from certain platforms, not over investing in low attention media. But then also not letting creative results on low attention media drive your overarching decisions. Maybe so. You're right. It's not don't invest in other marketing channels. It's maybe use this to reframe results.

[Rob DeMars]

For sure.

[Lana Jasper]

That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing Marketing Architects.