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Mediaedge:cia Sensor™ study: Pay attention, please!

New York - London - Mediaedge:cia reports that the challenges posed by "partial attention" represent real opportunities for brand engagement. MEC's conclusions are based on the findings of its on-going global Sensor™ study series, which surveyed 22,255 adults across 23 countries including the United States.

"Pay attention, please!" maps the fragmentation of audience attention along a continuum -- from "full focus" to "diffuse attention" - brought about by the growing adoption of new technologies. A person's position on the continuum suggests his or her receptivity to brand communication.

"As people juggle more stimuli in an attempt to identify what is meaningful to them, the optimal role for commercial communication is not to work within partial attention, but to pull people out of it and keep them fully focused for the duration of their exposure to the brand," said Damian Thompson, European Director of Consumer Insights. "Partial attention offers a real opportunity for brands to engage people who are not fully focused on something else."

According to the study, those in a state of partial or "open" attention are not actively listening to everything around them; rather, they are engaged in continuous low-level scanning or responsive awareness.

An estimated 44 percent of students and 41 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds find themselves in this state very often or often - the highest percentage of any demographic. Audiences in a state of either full focus (fully engaged with one task - most likely work) or multi-tasking want 'pull', not 'push', media. To underscore this point, the study reports that 61 percent of those in a state of full focus and 59 percent who are multi-tasking are unwilling to be interrupted.

The study also suggests that registering a person's exposure to a medium is meaningless without the relevance of the content being delivered and the context in which it is consumed. "When advertisers attempt to engage audiences, it's important to understand where people are, why they are in that particular place, and what the communication can do for them while they are there," said Thompson.

Order a copy of the full Sensor study report here.