The size of businesses advertising does matter, especially in the busy digital space. That is a key takeaway from data hub Adelaide, whose new report finds 300×600 creatives capture about 4x more attention than 320×50 ads. Their data also shows that mobile ad placements capture well over 50% more attention that desktop placements.

“[We] have found that coverage – the percent of the screen covered by the ad, largely driven by ad size – was the strongest indicator of attention, even more so than viewability. The reason for this, as you might expect, is that larger ads are more likely to be looked at,” said Marc Guldimann, CEO, Adelaide. “Our research, and that of Lumen which used eye-tracking, found adjacent advertising – typical in desktop environments – to be less effective at capturing consumer attention. On the flip side, the most effective mobile ads appear directly in a user’s feed. While the amount of time those ads are in-view tends to be lower in mobile than on desktop, that time is far more valuable on mobile. Coupled with the fact that mobile is an inherently smaller screen size, it means that most ads on mobile have a higher screen coverage too and this makes mobile a more attentive medium.”

That attentiveness, says Guldimann, is key to audience engagement, to that point that Adelaide has created an attention metric, called Cost Per Attention, which looks at the size of the ad, length of viewability, ad location, and what is in full view, giving advertisers a better idea of how to optimize ad placement along with campaign creative. According to company information clients using the attention metrics have seen up to a 30% increase in their Cost Per Attention.

“Attention is to brands what clicks or conversions are to performance advertisers. Understanding the quality of media through the lens of attention metrics helps brand advertisers leverage the same strategies and tactics that direct response advertisers have used since the dawn of digital advertising. Now a brand can compare the cost of consumer attention across formats, publishers and mediums and optimize their advertising to the most efficient brand impact. This is revolutionary for brand marketers who have traditionally relied on feedback loops that took months and were driven by data that is devoid of incrementality,” said Guldimann.

But, of course, simply having a consumer’s attention isn’t enough. Ads need relevance and interest to engage the shopper. To go along with a larger size ad, he suggests adding animation and including a visual hierarchy.

“The best advice for digital creatives is to use simple animation with large brand assets and a clear visual hierarchy. While Adelaide is focused on the quality of media, we’re impressed by the research from System 1 on fluent devices and Jenni Romaniak at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute on distinctive brand assets. As attention data becomes more integrated in to marketing decision systems, innovative marketers will use media quality as a guide for what type of creative they should use. For example, in low attention environments a simple logo might be best,” said Guldimann.