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- [00:00]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Foreign.
- [00:06]
John Evans
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to uncensored cmo. Now, one of the primary jobs for every marketer is to capture the attention of your audience. And in today's media fragmented world, that is harder and harder than it's ever been before. So it's really important that we plan based on attention, not just based on reach. And that's why I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Karen Nelson Fields, who is, who's a returning guest and the world expert on measuring attention. She's also launched a new book called the Attention Economy which has just come out. So I'm gonna quiz her on why does attention matter, how do you measure it and what should we be doing differently to get more share of attention? This is a great episode. You're gonna love it. Here it is. Karen Nelson Field, welcome back to the show. It's good to have you back.
- [00:49]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Good to be here.
- [00:50]
John Evans
Well, you've been quite busy recently, I think is an understatement of the century. And you've just got a new book out called the Attention Economy as well, a blueprint for the category. Congratulations on that. I'm sure that's no mean feat. How long did that take to put together?
- [01:03]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I mean, so look, it's an interesting one. So the first book was four years ago. Four and five years ago. And it was kind of stepping into what's coming, whereas this one is, okay, it's landed. What have we learned? Where is it going? So it really sets the tone for the science that sits behind it, the practices of ethics that need to occur in an attention economy and where kind of the product sets landing and what it will take to be an enduring category. So I'm pretty proud of it, actually.
- [01:36]
John Evans
It's amazing really. The thing that surprised me actually was in the beginning, the first chapter, you kind of referred to it as the boring chapter. You need to get through it with all this.
- [01:42]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I saw that.
- [01:44]
John Evans
But then you talk about the history of attention. I had no, no idea that attention as a kind of subject matter has been studied for over 100 years. Going back to.
- [01:52]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah, I mean, it's important to make, to talk about that because, you know, this is not new. You know, we're not like jumping in on some sort of whim. It's something that's been important for knowledge for a long time. Right. So it's the boring chapter kind of defines the fact that there is already a definition in place. And we're not here to make that up. We're here to see how that then can apply in our category, which is.
- [02:22]
John Evans
Advertising, and just for everyone listening and watching. It's not boring, by the way. It was really.
- [02:27]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, we threw in some Kim Kardashian.
- [02:29]
John Evans
You did King. Exactly. You got some Google in there. There's some fascinating references.
- [02:32]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Kim Kardashian.
- [02:33]
John Evans
Yeah, you know, I know it's very on trend as well. And presumably now, you know, when a lot of literature was written, we probably operated in a, a world where you got print and out of home and radio and, you know, the formats, advertising were fairly basic. But as you make, as you make the point with Google, the fragmentation now is much, much greater than probably it's ever been. And that must be a big factor in why attention matters more than advertising.
- [02:55]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It was interesting you even raised that, because my original PhD was audience measurement. Right. But it was at a time when fragmentation was at its highest at the time. And there was a problem with measurement back then, which was, Well, I know, 17 years ago, but if you fast track to today, it's, I don't know, 100x in terms of what implications there are for advertisers. So, yeah, it's, it's an interesting ecosystem.
- [03:21]
John Evans
Now, I wanted to get into some basics just to set us up before we get into some of the more complex things. But let's start with the case for attention. Now, yeah, this might sound a bit obvious, but does attention matter? Because again, I've seen some people that go, oh, it doesn't matter, as long as they walk past a poster and they get the key entry points and the branding, it's all fine. But, but what does the science tell us about the role of attention and what difference it makes to advertising outcomes?
- [03:44]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, it's interesting you use that example because that to me is passive attention anyway. Right. So someone walking past a billboard and getting the distinctive assets in the peripheral, that's still attention. So when someone says to me, is attention important? I often say, well, turn off your ads. I don't wanna see you for another six months. I want you to turn off your advertising and then I want you to come back to me and see how your brand's going. So I think that's the case for attention. This is not new information that people need to see your ads. So I get quite frustrated with people that ask me that.
- [04:19]
John Evans
And you mentioned passive and active attention. So can you measure the, well, what is the difference between those and can you measure the difference between the two?
- [04:25]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because when I set this business up, I mean, you know, I've background and academic. I always wanted there to be some sort of rigor around whatever's next rather than, you know, sell some gimmick, because we can. And I base it on history and base it on literature which talks about active attention. Being someone sort of stops what they're doing, pushes distraction out and literally focuses on something. Right. To learn something. Whereas passive attention is unintended or, you know, it sort of gets you in, in a unconscious. Unconscious, subconscious kind of way where it. You don't really realize what you're looking at. So that's kind of framing and things like that. So yeah, we set it up in our own technology to be able to.
- [05:12]
John Evans
Collect both because I was fascinated by Ian McGilchrist work. Isn't it the kind of left and right hemisphere, it's almost like the, the right hemisphere is aware of what's around it, but the left hemisphere is engaged in actually focusing on something and, and they're two different modes for tension.
- [05:26]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It's absolutely the same. So that's why we collect what we collect. And it's interesting because both have different value from an outcome perspective. So there's three states and one is active, one is passive and one is non attention, which makes up 100% of your viewing experience across an ad, for example, or content or whatever. So once you understand those three states, it's really interesting to see what kind of outcomes occur as a result of that different state.
- [05:58]
John Evans
Obviously depending on which state you're in, determines the outcome, presumably. Yeah. In terms of active attention.
- [06:03]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, it's nuanced because it can be related to if it's new news or not new news, big brand, small brand, things like that. But yeah, it's important to capture both.
- [06:15]
John Evans
Yeah. This is a question I want to ask you actually, because instinctively I'd imagine if there's a brand that I'm really familiar with, it's got very strong distinctive assets. Maybe it's KitKat, for example. It's red and got the white logo and got the bars. I probably don't need as much reminding to be aware of it compared to a brand I've never seen before. Does that play out in the data?
- [06:35]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It does, except your children haven't been aware of KitKat. Right. So what I often say to brands is that is the truth that a highly distinctive brand you can pick up as you're walking past or as you're not looking directly, but you have to make sure that you have this flywheel because the next generation category buyers don't even know who you are. So it's, it's kind of easy to say you don't need as much, but you can't rest on that current group of buyers forever.
- [07:07]
John Evans
And I suppose if we take the classic Ehrenberg bas principle of light buyers are where the growth comes from, that becomes even more true, doesn't it?
- [07:14]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, and if you take their philosophy around the distribution of buying, people are constantly moving through, right? So light buyers are constantly coming through and then become heavy and then maybe get out of the category and there's this kind of literal flywheel. And that's how we look at the attentive states that, you know, sure, certain campaigns don't need as much because it is expensive to buy active attention, but at the same time you have to be careful not to rely on passive only, which is unfortunately what a lot of people do by sort of pushing their money into some of the long tail of digital.
- [07:51]
John Evans
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I saw Peter actually presenting at thinkbox. Attention adjusted kind of cost per millions and it completely changed how you'd look at the, the world. I mean, I think TV ended up becoming like the second cheapest media on that basis.
- [08:06]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
You say that years ago, one of the first pieces of work I did when I left the university was around the value or the cost or the cpm. Because to be honest, I, and it's no surprise in the book I call it cost per meaningless thousand. Right, we'll talk about that in a minute. But the point being that it's interesting because expensive CPMs have pushed their CPMs down to match the low CPMs that are coming out in the digital space. And so when you actually do the analysis and work out not just how much tension but the outcomes, the CPMs are probably too low relative to their impact. And the CPMs that are already cheap are probably not cheap enough. So I, interestingly enough, I got picked up by Wall Street Journal quite a few years back now, and I think I talk about that in the first book. So, Pete, the whole concept of CPM is so flawed because it used to be, it used to be, that was the unit pricing, right? You could, if you pay more, you get more. But these days you don't know because not all rich is equal. So your perceived value of what you're paying for isn't there. But on top of that, we live in a biddable system. So you're paying what you think you have to bid for for something. You don't know what you're getting. So it's like this double whamm. So CPM I think is one of the hardest hitting metrics given what we deal with at the moment in the measurement ecosystem around attention as well as obviously viewability and things like that.
- [09:39]
John Evans
Now can you also link attention to memory as well? Because that's the other thing is obviously as marketers we're trying to create memories and associations with our brand. So what's the evidence of the role of attention has in terms of what.
- [09:50]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
We have much evidence in our own, but not just ours. There's this actually effect called switch cost effect, which basically means that the more switching you do, the less likely you are to retain information. And we see that in our own data because we can track attentive state. So if you're switching between passive and active and non and active and passive, and so we can tell. So the more switching you do, the less likely you are to remember. And then there's also an impact on longer play. So time is important. So the more time you spend processing something, the longer time you will remember it afterwards. So we've seen that across time as well. So plenty of evidence. Plenty of evidence.
- [10:40]
John Evans
And I think I've seen a pretty incredible chart from you which talks about, is it the memory threshold of around two and a half seconds?
- [10:47]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah.
- [10:47]
John Evans
That something like 80% of ads never gets that point.
- [10:51]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
85.
- [10:51]
John Evans
85.
- [10:52]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
But it's digital. So look, that's an interesting slide because we see that across every single collection I've never published on it, but we see that across every single collection I've ever seen where there's a point at which under that this doesn't mean it doesn't. That under that isn't valuable. But from a memory perspective, particularly related to mental availability, that's kind of the line in the sand where people go, oh, now I get it. Yeah. And I mean that makes common sense.
- [11:22]
John Evans
It does, yeah. Yeah, completely.
- [11:23]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Every regression, every study, we sort of see roughly around that point. Yeah, it does vary on size of the brand, but largely speaking that's the threshold.
- [11:31]
John Evans
So you can link attention to memory, can you link attention to kind of advertising outcomes as well in terms of results?
- [11:38]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Oh, absolutely. So apart from we in our own technology lead people to a virtual store straight after the viewing experience. We, through our ad tech product, which is optimization and verification, we link it directly to a customer's outcomes. So, you know, it's funny because I often talk about outcomes being two directional. One is called meaty proof and one I call marketing proof. So marketing proof is reasonably spurious because, you know, recall brand uplift you know, all those fluffy things that if your baseline's not strong, then it's spurious, but then the meaty proof is what you want, which is profit and cost of goods sold and, you know, acquisition kind of. So the things that CEOs want to see or CFOs want to see versus the things that marketers want to see. And we've done both. So we've done, you know, modeled work around mental availability and short term advertising strength with baselines, but we've also then connected our ad tech to, as I said, increase in conversion of applications and, you know, more web traffic and reduced cost of goods sold and improved profitability and reduced resources and you name it.
- [13:01]
John Evans
So both brand and business effects can both. Both will be lifted by.
- [13:05]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I mean, I often say the reality is attention and outcomes are not perfectly related. And the reason why that is is because if the creative is poor, then that attention will be wasted. So if you put a very poor ad, not even from an emotional perspective, but from a poor branding perspective, it can easily be misattributed to your larger competitor. And that's why anyone that sells you the dream that it will always lead to a sale is driving you into this short term rubbish.
- [13:39]
John Evans
Yeah, no, I mean you kind of believe the data and then you just spending a lot of money on, you know. Yeah, basically what you're getting people to click on something.
- [13:47]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
But also, but also you're bringing people that were already going to buy your brand forward.
- [13:54]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [13:54]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Which is not good for profitability anyway, not growing your brand.
- [13:57]
John Evans
Yeah. And that's probably why the brand element and the business element go together, doesn't it? Because you're also trying to build buyers of tomorrow. I mean, back to our friends, Ehrenberg, Bass, in terms of 95. 5.
- [14:06]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I talk about that all the time. So, you know, it is really important to think about buyers of today and the buyers of tomorrow.
- [14:12]
John Evans
Yeah, yeah, you got to do both. You mentioned the creative there, actually. That's quite interesting. And you introduced this idea when we last spoke about attention elasticity.
- [14:19]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yes.
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John Evans
That actually varies, doesn't it? Quite a lot on different platforms in terms of the variability, I suppose that the creative makes.
- [14:27]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So just to step back, it's probably also a controversial, particularly creative versus media. Right.
- [14:34]
John Evans
So.
- [14:35]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So the way that the user experience works is that it trains you how to use Facebook, it trains you how to use YouTube, it trains you how to use TikTok. So the nature of that user experience defines how much attention you will pay. It gives you this boundary this ceiling and floor. And what if you think about an average which sits right in the middle. Good creative from a, you know, emotional unexpectedness, relevance play will sit slightly above that average, whereas those that are less appealing will sit slightly below that average. So that's kind of how creative and media sit into the attention equation.
- [15:19]
John Evans
I hadn't thought about the concept you introduced there of that the platform's almost training your attention. Is it that way around then? The platform's almost creating behaviors that drive your attention.
- [15:28]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
There's lots of books on it.
- [15:29]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [15:29]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
There's lots of books on it. For fear of our teenagers.
- [15:32]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [15:33]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So it works the same way for ads. So most marketers think if we build it they will, they will watch it. It just doesn't work that way because of the nature of the experience that's built by the engineers that keeps you.
- [15:46]
John Evans
Scrolling and is that because they've got the data on. On me. So they're basically going, right, we know what's capturing its attention, therefore we're going to serve up this kind of thing. Or is it that way around? Is it kind of playing with the data or.
- [15:57]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, look at the. I'm not in San Franc to understand the nuance, but there's a science behind keeping you watching the content or scrolling through to see ads. For example, more ads but less time. But they control our user experience within an inch of our lives. For example, you all think you're in control of your own attention, but the way you use Facebook is the same as the way I use Facebook was the same as how you use Facebook. They use Facebook within a very small margin of error. And that's not. It's largely because it's designed that way.
- [16:32]
John Evans
Yeah. So if you're seeing small margin of error within platform, you're seeing differences between different platforms and how they're doing.
- [16:38]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Correct? Massively.
- [16:39]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [16:39]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So to your point about this elasticity. So the capacity of attention is much greater on this platform and much smaller on this platform. And that's what. And that's why not a reach is equal.
- [16:51]
John Evans
Yeah.
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Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Because you could put a 30 second ad on here and half of it will be seen. You can put a 30 second ad on here and it won't. No matter how good the creative is, even if it's a Cannes lion award winner. So most people don't understand that that is, that is your roadmap to successful advertising or not.
- [17:09]
John Evans
Yes. Yeah.
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Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Regardless of how beautiful and creative the ad is.
- [17:12]
John Evans
Yeah. And this feels like the holy Grail bit, doesn't it? This feels like the bit that everyone should be talking about.
- [17:17]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
That's not the way. It's literally the Holy Grail piece because once you understand that, you can do your job.
- [17:22]
John Evans
Yeah.
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Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Because you can't change it. Right. Everyone thinks, well, I'll just build this beautiful emotive piece of creative and it will change the way that you watch. It doesn't work that way.
- [17:31]
John Evans
That makes sense.
- [17:32]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So. And we know that because of the technology that we have, we can control for creative. Over the years. It's been nearly eight years, so we can intercept Facebook with an ad that we want you to see without you knowing in your own personal feed. By the nature of our app. Right. We've tested on this forever. So it is literally the Holy Grail.
- [17:53]
John Evans
Now you gave me a demo of this earlier, right. So I'm really excited for you to explain this because you showed me on your phone how this all works. But explain how you measure attention because it's quite sophisticated and it's amazing the data that you can get from your app.
- [18:07]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It was designed originally as a research tech which essentially if we want to go and collect 1,000 views, for example, in Finland, we, our tech is connected to a panel exchange and Programmatic panel exchange. We can tap on the shoulder of 5,000 Finnish people and a thousand will say, yep, next time I'm on Facebook I'll get five bucks or whatever it is. And what happens is you download our app and then the next time you're on Facebook or TikTok or YouTube or depending on the setup it allows us, you give us. It's GDPR compliant in that it gives it's consent based. But what it does is it turns on the camera, which you know, is normal for us now, and it films you, but then it also grabs the back end of the of the view. Right. So this is really critically important. So it's not just collecting facial footage which I can then turn into gaze points, but it also collects reference points behind the view. So I can tell how fast I've scrolled, it can tell how fast I've scrolled, it can tell if I've orientated my phone, it can tell if I've got EarPods in and how hypervolume is or not. And it does that at a sub second level. So 0.2 of a second. So what that does is it gives us a reference point to how to anchor the gaze. So whether it's active or passive or non attention is really accurate because we have the coordinates at the back of the device. The Other beautiful thing about that is that's the information that allows us to build adtech products. Because adtech world lives against device data. Right. And viewing data. So it's been serendipitous in that we built it that way because now we can move into which we have into product which allows us to predict attention across the programmatic ecosystem.
- [19:55]
John Evans
And presumably you take all that data and you can train the AI then can you to learn from that data as well?
- [20:00]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I've done that for years.
- [20:01]
John Evans
Yeah. Start to then predict how people will behave.
- [20:04]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I mean we were built as a proper ML business, so it was. We built the stack first and product second.
- [20:09]
John Evans
Yeah, that's a great way of doing it.
- [20:11]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah.
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John Evans
One data point I found fascinating, the book as well, and maybe explain it is the difference between what people think they're buying in terms of you think you're buying lots of impressions versus what you're actually buying as advertisers. A big difference between those two things.
- [20:25]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah, I mean served versus seen. Right. So look, that's been a big part of my category growth agenda for a long time. And you know, as someone who is from the measurement side, I struggle when an impression is supposed to mean impression. Supposed to mean an impression when it doesn't. So basically the reality is you can buy a thousand impressions here and a thousand impressions here and the, the level of seen versus served is so significantly vast, but you still pay the same. A million dollars. A million dollars. Don't think a million dollars per thousand, but do you know what I mean? And that's, that is literally the core problem of our entire ecosystem. So when measurement is not equal, what that has an effect on things like viewability. Because viewability is based on this equation that time and view is equal or impressions are equal. It impacts reach based planning. You talked about Pete, it impacts his pet peeve, which is esof. So my whole agenda for the last eight years has been if we can build signal based data that makes reach equal again, then my job is done and that's where it's going.
- [21:37]
John Evans
Yeah, you're quite right. I mean Peter's just saying like ear saving we will come to know and love 10 years ago doesn't work if you can't make an assumption that all reach is equal.
- [21:45]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
He has literally slides that I've seen and used that describe the point in time when everything changed. And it's really, really striking that it's at the same time that the digital spend increases. Again, not to suggest the digital is bad, but you're buying Impressions, but not getting the full, you know, 100% of what you're buying.
- [22:11]
John Evans
Yeah.
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Dr. Karen Nelson Field
And that variability depends across all different formats.
- [22:14]
John Evans
And I think, I think from the data in your book, you know, you think you're buying around 70, 80% impressions and it gets down to about 15% when you look at viewing more than two seconds.
- [22:24]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I can't remember the numbers exactly, but to your point, it's.
- [22:26]
John Evans
The difference is massive, isn't huge if you treat two seconds as what's required.
- [22:30]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
To actually, at least this is true. So less than around about 15 to 20% max get more than this threshold, which is what you speak about, you know, but there's tools now like, you know, when I there, there are products, including our own, that use human data to essentially normalize this error. So we are definitely, and I call it fab four in the book. So there are products for every stage of the ecosystem. So you know, whether it's planning and strategy or, you know, buying or, you know, whether it's optimization, there is creative testing, there's, there's a stage where people can jump in from an attention perspective. So yeah, it's becoming quite, quite a category.
- [23:17]
John Evans
Yeah, it is, isn't it? And much needed by the sounds of it. And Umara is saying so each different platform will have different definitions, impressions as well, as we were saying before. So impressions on one platform might be different to the definition of impressions on another.
- [23:31]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It's not as much about definition of impressions anymore because the MRC have kind of come in and the regulations around what that means. The Achilles heel of our industry is this little thing called time in view and that's what they rely on. So. But the relationship between time and view and actual viewing is what's unstable. So. So it's not that impressions are different because that would be MRC against.
- [23:59]
John Evans
Got you.
- [23:59]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It's more that the relationship between the ad being on screen and so the time in view attention relationship varies.
- [24:09]
John Evans
Got you. Okay, I've got you. So you've been able to marry up what people actually respond to versus what the. Each platform is saying is time in view. And those two things differ in terms of the relationship. Yeah, that's so interesting.
- [24:22]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
That's why not all reach is equ.
- [24:23]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [24:24]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
So if the error that sit underneath the delivery was equal, so let's just for argument's sake, say served and not seen or seen but not served was, you know, 75% across all impressions, then you could live with that because it's consistent. But the issue is that that number Changes drastically across depending on the device and the platform and the format and the ad length. And that's the problem.
- [24:51]
John Evans
I really like, by the way, your definition of served and seen. That's really for me, as you know, I'm not an expert like you on this kind of thing. I get that. Right. The difference between the two, one is.
- [25:00]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
A much more human approach. Served is an ad tech approach and it's binary. Did it happen, did it not? Human approach is, did it get served? And how much time do we spend with it? You know, that's the reality. And I think and well, I know that's where the future's going in terms of, you know, human led, synthetic data.
- [25:24]
John Evans
Now you've spent a long time thinking about this research.
- [25:27]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Way too much time.
- [25:27]
John Evans
You've got a business around it, you've written three books on it sort of thing. What are you seeing the industry move in the direction it should be? I mean, absolutely give us a sense of the progress that.
- [25:37]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Oh, I'm pretty proud. I mean the MRC have stepped in this year and I'm pretty proud of, you know, the IB has done a great job. ARF are amazing and everyone in the MRC now are kind of going, okay, we need to build some standards around this. What I love about that is its validation for its value. So I can see it moving and I think they're talking roughly, let's just call it middle next year. I think that will change the industry again because a lot of people, and that's what happened with, with viewability. It took a lot of years for it to be standardized and then it became standardized and then it took off. I just see this as the next iteration of that now. Viewability measures will always need to be there because you need served and seen. So yeah, I'm pretty proud of the industry to be honest.
- [26:27]
John Evans
I can see media planners getting pretty excited, you know, by applying this tool to their thinking and planning. What about the platforms themselves? Because presumably there are winners and losers.
- [26:36]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
In the mix and it's hard because that is the truth. So if you use a metric like attention or value or if you use a metric like human involvement or whatever it is you want to, when it's not binary, you are always, there's always going to be a winner and loser. The trick is that you said it before that because all platforms have its value, but what this does is it normalizes the CPM again. You know, if you, if you get an outcome but you pay relative for that, then it works. So it's less about more attention matters. It's more about how much do I pay for the outcome relative to the attention I'm buying. So that's where it's going.
- [27:23]
John Evans
Which raises a really good question because, I mean, ever since I started my career 30 years ago, whenever it was now, CPM's been in my lingo, right? And you talk about CPM, it's one measure that allows you then to compare lots of different media and how much you're spending. And it's kind of efficiency measure, I suppose. What could we call? I mean, what do we name the new. What's the new thing that we're going.
- [27:43]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
To say, where does it go next.
- [27:46]
John Evans
In terms of is there a metric we can then create? No, it comes back, I say we.
- [27:49]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
But you know, well, look, CPM is going to come back, right? So. Because at the end of the day there is a value equation. John Way, who is amazing in our industry, talks about this all the time. So the value equation for an advertiser is, you know, what is from a publisher perspective, how much reach can I get? You know, what does it cost and what is the quality and. Or attention. Right. So those three things are important and at the end of the day you're always going to need. The CPM will come back to be whole again once the reach component is fixed. So one thing that has been interesting with attention is, you know, we're all learning, right? And so I think we're ready for metrics that are simple for advertisers to understand, to kind of get their head around what is it that they're buying. And that's kind of next phase.
- [28:48]
John Evans
Yeah, because that, that feels to me, I think people, most marketers out there will go, ah, yeah, I get, there's this thing called attention. I get seen and you know, served is a different thing I want to move to. Then it almost feels like we need a bit of help with the language, don't we? To go, ah, now I know what I'm buying.
- [29:04]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
What is next is metrics around the volume of attention relative to the reach components, so big on our agenda and.
- [29:12]
John Evans
Also how do you do it? So if you describe what you do for media planners, how do you go around the planning process? What does that look like?
- [29:21]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
We have optimizers and we have SaaS platforms where you can kind of jump in, upload your media plan and then optimize to different objectives or optimize to more or less attention using CPMs. And it's recommended, it's got recommendations engine, all that sort of thing from a planning perspective. But a lot of our customers in the planning area will use either an API of our data or and they can do their own normalizing. So a lot of people like to do so. People like Richard Kirk, he's quite famous for the stuff that he's written around equalizing reach. And so he's used our data before where, you know, it kind of ads as a signal for their planning systems. But for generalized brands, a lot of people will just use the platform and kind of upload media plans and go from there.
- [30:07]
John Evans
That's what I was kind of sorry trying to get to really was like, if I've got a brand objective, I know when my creative is good or not. I've done that. I know how the last campaign did. So presumably this can help me optimize for my reach objectives.
- [30:19]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
There's two ways to do it. So there's at the planning in which is pre flight, but there's also in flight. Right. So you can also add a tag to the back of your creative and then it will return how much attention you're earning and then you can make changes mid flight to the myriad of impressions that you're buying to basically cut out the long tail of rubbish and, you know, improve your objectives.
- [30:47]
John Evans
Oh, I like that. Because often these days we have multiple bits of creative for multiple different platforms, you know, running at different times, different promotions, different cycles. So taking all that into consideration, I could optimize all of that based on a kind of.
- [31:00]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yes. I mean, planning in basically does one part of it and kind of gives the buyer a roadmap to use. But the optimization live kind of then tidies it up even further. So it goes down to the URL level, which is super fun to watch because we do it literally instantaneously. So it's super fun.
- [31:23]
John Evans
That's like a fun. The graphic must be cool. The dashboard on that must be really cool.
- [31:26]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It's very fun.
- [31:27]
John Evans
Now, talking about implementation as well, not only have you written a book, you've also launched a course as if you weren't busy. She says, oh yeah, there's that one as well. Yeah. What's the course all about?
- [31:39]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Well, the course is kind of an extension of the book really. I mean, you know, the book is words, but this is interaction tasks exam one on one with us. Like we do a team thing at the end where we all talk about the industry and you know, what's happening. The last one was about jag, but also the MRC look, it kind of, I guess for people that want to have life in the delivery. It's me lecturing, really, but then having interaction with. There's some exercises to do and some fun bits and so, yeah, so that's been kind of fun. The cohort was sold out last time and the next one is, I think, in a few weeks time.
- [32:25]
John Evans
Fantastic.
- [32:26]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Yeah, it's kind of fun.
- [32:27]
John Evans
And if people want to do it, where do they have to go?
- [32:28]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
And you can find it on the WAC website under Lions Learning.
- [32:33]
John Evans
I thought I'd finish up as well by asking how amplified intelligence is going because it's expanding rapidly. You're growing all the time, your roles changing, launching books and courses. How's that journey been for you?
- [32:43]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
It's been amazing. I mean, to be able to put in a new CEO has been super valuable for us. You know, Annaliese has a long history with extreme growth in technology, so she was the right person to take the business to the next level. It gives me the opportunity to double down on, you know, what we're building from metrics perspective and making sure that our product is absolutely spot on in terms of it works. I mean, you know, when you're a measurement business, it's supposed to work. So that's the role change. But yeah, we're across three markets, so we're in the uk, the US and Australia. It's going really well.
- [33:26]
John Evans
Brilliant. Oh, Karen, thank you so much. It's always exciting to catch up with you. I love what you're doing.
- [33:29]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
Thank you very much.
- [33:30]
John Evans
And it's so much value. Yeah. I should say this, actually, for anyone listening, we now have an exclusive Tony's Chocol, only branded.
- [33:36]
Dr. Karen Nelson Field
I'll eat all of that in one go.
- [33:38]
John Evans
Indeed. Well, there you go. In case of emergency, open. There we go. Karen, it's brilliant to see you again. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.