Marketers are ‘missing out’ on attention by not focusing on auditory content

In the battle for attention in busy front rooms – including distractions from second screens, children, pets and good old-fashioned conversation – audio is a key weapon for advertisers, a new study concludes. 

Why auditory attention matters

The majority of advertising attention research has focused on visual media, often via eye-tracking technology. This approach has helped brands to move beyond viewability as a measure of ad effectiveness. However, it may fail to fully capture the multisensory nature of human attention.

The big experiment

New research, commissioned by Thinkbox, the trade body for UK commercial TV, and carried out by Dr Alastair Goode, a cognitive scientist from Gorilla In The Room, set out to understand how much attention brand advertising can gain when consumer eyes are focused on other tasks. 

It was the follow-up to a 2022 study (Giving attention a little attention), which compared business research with academic literature on attention to advertising. 

Participants were asked to watch video ads while performing different tasks, including: listening to music; scrolling an Instagram-style feed of images; listening to speech; reading posts on X (formerly Twitter); reading a web page; texting; and having a conversation. 

The study found that auditory memory consistently outperformed visual memory (72% vs. 60%), and that people are able to process and retain numerous audio cues (including spoken messages, sonic brand assets and jingles) without paying visual attention to an ad. 

“If you aren’t maximising auditory content then you’re missing out,” concluded Goode. 

Takeaways

1. Audio is the most important thing to consider when people are not fully paying attention to an ad.
2. Audio-visual is more than just audio plus visual: brands can use them together when forming a narrative.
3. Visual attention does not automatically guarantee an ad will end up in memory.
4. Media and creative, as well as psychological factors, are important in producing outcomes. 

AB

Sourced from Thinkbox, Gorilla In The Room