How to accurately measure attention to video advertising

Attention has been proposed as a replacement for ratings to better measure advertising exposure quality. Attention measurement suppliers, who are key stakeholders in this proposed shift, have primarily used eye tracking to assess how people pay attention to ads. However, other literature-supported physiological measures may be beneficial or superior for measuring attention to advertising (e.g. heart rate, skin conductance). This research used a lab-based experiment that manipulated attention levels to video ads (i.e. high vs low) to test the accuracy of a range of potentially scalable physiological attention measures. Eight physiological measures were collected and compared to electroencephalogram (EEG), a ‘gold standard’ but non-scalable direct measure of attention, and a survey-based self-reported attention measure. The results suggest that eye tracking measures have problems discriminating high attention from low attention. Heart rate proved best at this discrimination task and has the advantage of being able to measure attention to sound as well as visuals.