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Ad industry experts have warned against falling down the “rabbit hole” of focusing on visual attention in ads.

During a panel at Thinkbox’s “Attention in Context” event, speakers discussed the established methods of measuring visual attention and the potential blind spot this could be creating for media planners.

Matt Hill, research and planning director at Thinkbox and chair of the panel, asked panellists if the focus on visual attention meant there was the potential for media planners to go down “rabbit holes” that weren’t optimal for driving attention.

Shazia Ginai, chief executive, Neuro-Insight, agreed with this and added that Neuro-Insight had recently tested the use of sound in ads with Unilever.

Ginai's company showed two sets of respondents the same ad from Unilever, but the second set of respondents were shown the ad with sonic sound at the end. The latter’s brain response was 24% higher than the respondents without.

Ginai added: “We're going to go down the rabbit hole quite quickly, because there is audio-only advertising which is taking centre stage with things like podcasts. We aren't going to have visual as a medium in every instance and so audio needs to be treated in isolation. 

“There are ways in which you can capture attention when it comes to audio, but it's not going to be through eye tracking. So we're definitely missing a piece of the puzzle there.”

Kate Hartley, managing director, product and innovation at Dentsu Data Labs, added that in her work, sound adds a 12% lift to the effect of an ad, which can rise to as much as 56%.

Panellist Sam Gaunt, EMEA media strategy director at GlaxoSmithKline, also used the example of the McDonald’s whistle, and said: “That really cuts through. You can hear it above anything else.”

In a talk before the panel session, Dr Ali Goode illustrated the importance of sound in visual ads through his research.

Conducted between 2019 and 2020, the research saw one participant stay glued to his phone throughout the entire TV ad, but as soon as the jingle “Did somebody say Just Eat?” played, he sang in time with it.

Speaking to ±±¾©Èü³µpk10, Goode said: “A lot of technology has been focused very much on visual attention, with what eyes are looking at, where gaze is, and attention is a much bigger story than that."