JCDecaux and Lumen Research Propose Attention as Common Media Currency

Out-of-home advertising company JCDecaux has released research proposing a unified metric for actual advertising attention across various media channels.

In collaboration with eye-tracking research firm Lumen Research, JCDecaux suggests defining "attention" as a common currency to compare advertising effectiveness between traditional out-of-home (OOH) and digital media. The study highlights that an advertisement's viewability does not guarantee it will be seen, a factor the OOH industry has long accounted for in its calculations.

Traditionally, the OOH sector has used "Visibility Adjusted Contacts" (VAC), a metric that considers the realistic probability of an ad actually being noticed. This measure is based on eye-tracking studies and differs from digital advertising's "viewability metrics," which solely focus on whether an ad is on screen for a certain duration. The research compared viewability percentages across different media, finding that digital OOH screens are more likely to be noticed than static posters.

The study indicates that the probability of digital ads being noticed varies significantly by platform. For desktop users, the chance of noticing an ad was 22 percent, while it was higher on mobile devices, especially for larger formats. JCDecaux aims to provide advertisers with a clearer understanding of their campaign spending by establishing a common standard for advertising attention.