August 12, 2022

It’s All About Attention

As marketers, attention is job number one. And media intelligence should be at the heart of any attention strategy. But the marketplace is not yet up to speed on how media intelligence can transform communication effectiveness. At Dataxet, we thought it was time to change the narrative…

August 12, 2022

It’s All About Attention

Media Intelligence:
Insights Built for the Attention Economy

In a world where every viewpoint generates heated debate, there’s one belief that has nearly universal agreement. Attention is the most valuable commodity. It’s the catalyst for everything we want our communications to achieve; from building awareness to sparking engagement to creating demand.

Media intelligence should be the go-to strategic resource for brands and organizations competing for attention. The biggest challenges they face are the ones our industry navigates every day. We make sense of the dynamic media marketplace. No other client partner has our insight into what it takes to get attention and traction in a world of trending topics, conversations, news and content cycles. This is why businesses come to us to ensure they’re fully up-to-date about brand and reputation-related activity across the marketplace.

But there’s still a gap between the real value of Media Intelligence and how it’s perceived.

For all the talk about actionable insights and data-led decision-making, a look at client tenders and briefs suggests the category is still more about monitoring observations than strategic insights. Progress has been made, but there’s a sizable perception gap.

So why is media intelligence stuck in a tactical role without a strategic seat at the table? Why this massive disconnect between client perceptions and the actual value we offer?

We’ve Seen This Before

Well, it’s a classic brand problem. Industry providers are best known for information that keeps customers in-the-know, but less relied on for guidance on what-to-do. The industry brand remains tethered to historical media monitoring perceptions.

It’s analogous to the advertising industry 15 years ago. Creative agencies were the client’s strategic partners helping guide brand and marketing strategy. Media agencies were the tactical partners negotiating efficient ad placement. But Media had all the critical audience, marketplace and competitive data. Over time, as marketers focused more on ROI, media practitioners turned these assets into a leading strategic role.

Media Intelligence is on that journey. We’re sitting on a unique stockpile of audience insights critical to customer success. It’s fair to say it’s the most underutilized resource in the urgent quest for attention.

It’s All About Attention

We’ve all seen versions of the scarcity story:

People spend less than 2.5 seconds with Facebook posts on desktop, and even less time on mobile
27% of video post viewers stay less than 1 second; 7% make it all the way through
People see 6,000-10,000 ads per day
And on it goes…

And that’s just brand activity. To a far greater extent, the entire media ecosystem is built around the escalating quest for people’s attention. Indeed, it’s at the heart of the content-for-attention business models of Facebook, Tik Tok, Google, Twitter and others. As people go about their day, massive industries are engaged in a fierce, sophisticated battle to get a moment or two or three of their time.

So, what role does media intelligence play in helping brands and organizations gain people’s attention?

A Critical Piece of the Research Picture

Media intelligence is a key, but not the only, research source clients’ use to inform communication decisions. Brand equity studies, audience segmentation, surveys and other research inform critical brand pillars like positioning, value proposition and messaging platforms. But as longer-term, highly structured tools, they also have their limitations.

When it comes to activation, we’re living in dynamic, ever-shifting waves of culture, opinions, influences and preferences. And it all affects a brand’s ability to communicate with their audience. This is where media intelligence can do far more than just provide a picture of what’s happening. We can answer bigger, higher value questions that provide clear direction for how to communicate better:

Contents:

What are the Top 10 topics?

How can our content have more impact?

Channels:

What were the top channels?

How can channel performance improve?

Channels:

What is our brand sentiment?

How do we improve consumer perceptions?

Measurement:

What is our SOV & ranking?

How can we compete more effectively?

A Simple Framework

It’s a daunting challenge: strategically engage your audience in a volatile media marketplace. When you unpack it, you can see the complexity:

Strategically engage

On-brand; Aligned with business and communication goals; Consumer-centric insights.

Volatile marketplace

High velocity shifts in topics, influences, opinions, news, culture and media sources driving the attention economy.

So, how can Media Intelligence turn millions of social, digital, eCommerce and media data points into a solution for this problem?

Insight-worthy vs. Comprehensive Data

There’s a tendency to include every data point and give it some significance. But posts with 2 likes don’t move any needles. Start with the big picture but distill your discovery into deeper dives of more selective, richer data sets to fuel better strategic insights. When aiming for insights, focus analysis on the content that matters. What matters? Content that:

Captures meaningful audience attention
Sparks engagement
Inspires emotion (either positive or negative)

Category data will provide benchmarks indicating what is meaningful across all these measures. Broader data from beyond your category can provide additional context (e.g., is overall activity in your category relatively high or low).

Focus on Attributes vs. Top 10 Lists

Every category works differently in terms of how content attracts attention and influences audiences. While trending topics constantly change, the attributes that drive attention, engagement and influence in your category are enduring. So, move past Top 10 Stories, Channels, Influencers, etc. to identify the make-or-break attributes. Examples include responsive, innovative, eco-friendly, affordable, inclusive, collaborative, accessible, inspiring. Which ones are driving conversations, news and perceptions in your category? When it comes time to execute, this will also give valuable insight into messaging context. And context is a key to attention (contextual ads get +87% time spent – Lumen Research).

Strategically Group Attributes

The goal here is to make your insights actionable and repeatable. This is key towards winning in the attention economy; foundational insights that enable you to engage with audiences at scale and speed. Your methodology should distill data into a framework of a few key brand drivers. As an example, we use the EVO™ process based on the three universal drivers of brand performance and audience impact; Experience, Values and Offers. This gives us an insightful way to define what drives attention for brands and organizations. Looking at data through these filters opens a world of competitive and communication insights, like; where your competitive gaps are on customer experience; why your offers are underperforming; how you can leverage key brand attributes for better campaign performance. These directly inform subsequent campaign content and channel direction.

Strategically Group Attributes

Points 1 – 3 above should be designed with activation in mind. Activation goals should shape the entire process – from how data is gathered and analyzed to how findings are developed and applied. Think in terms of the goals you have along the consumer journey; Awareness, Engagement and Impact (e.g., event registrations, site visits, purchase volume, perception change, trial). What type of information and insights do you need to make the best decisions?

Now you’re in position to engage with audiences at the speed of news, trends and conversations. You should have a grid combining your brand drivers (how you have grouped the key attributes) and your campaign goals along the consumer journey. For reference, ours looks like this:

Brand Drivers

Awareness

Engagement

Awareness

Experience

values

Offers

This keeps you on-brand, mitigates risk and focuses activation on marketing and communication goals. As you identify relevant topics, conversations and forums, you’ll be positioned to communicate in value-added, engaging ways.

The attention economy, like all disruptive models, presents both chaos and opportunity. For the media intelligence industry, it’s a massive opportunity. We’re uniquely positioned to make sense of this real-time, real-world flow of data. We can empower marketers with insights at scale and speed. We can help communication pros orchestrate the narrative. At the moment, not everyone thinks of us this way. That’s okay, we just need to start sharing our story in a way that gets their attention.

World Economic Forum Conference 2022

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