Seizing Short Attention Spans in Saturated Online Channels

November 06, 2017

Online video may have been slow to catch on in the days of 56k dial up, but in 2017 Internet users are bombarded with video content on each and every media platform via laptop, tablet or smartphone. Capturing – and keeping – a viewer’s attention, particularly the growing Millennial population, requires insight and tact.

Grabbing Their Attention

Advertisers have five seconds to grab a viewer’s attention. At nine seconds, goldfish have a longer attention span than that of the average consumer. Today’s market is oversaturated, meaning that more than ever, marketers must focus on producing clean and simple campaigns that connect directly to their target audience and avoid getting lost in a sea of background noise.

Try out the following strategies:
Use humour: But don’t deliver constant joy. And limit the shock value. The use of so-called “pure” humour promotes views and sharing, while “shock” humour is only useful to generate views. It also often has an adverse effect and quashes a moment of opportunity for an otherwise great piece of content. Develop content with its shareability in mind.

Create an experience: It’s a marketers job to communicate a product’s features and values while creating consumer excitement. A video that goes beyond and turns that moment into a memorable experience delivers more impact, creates value for the viewer and gives you the brand recognition you seek.

Building marketing content for every stage of your sales funnel and having each piece of the campaign serve a single purpose delivers brand and product information and educates and empowers the target audience in an organic manner. Campaigns that arm consumers with the tools necessary to make a good purchasing decision deliver the best customer experience.

Avoid blatant branding: Constant exposure is desensitizing consumers to advertisements. A Harvard Business Review study discovered people are prone to click away at the sight of a brand’s static logo as the only image they see, meaning subtlety should be an attribute to analyze with your target audience. Branding beyond your logo increases the amount of time an audience spends consuming content, which is especially important when seeking to create long-standing relationships.

Consider “brand pulsing,” which unobtrusively weaves brand images through an ad, and increases viewership by up to 20%, according to Thales Teixeira, a professor in Harvard Business School’s marketing faculty.

A message built around trust and entertainment encourages the buyer to consume content rather than dreading having to sit through the next sales pitch waiting to watch what they’re actually interested in.

Connect emotionally: Targeting a sense of joy would be a great strategy to express a positive brand image. Marketing Week illustrated how companies experienced amazing conversion rates when they focused on positive emotions over the 2015 Christmas season. A more recent study used facial recognition to show how consumers taken on an “emotional rollercoaster” reacted more positively compared to those without emotional variance in an ad’s tone. Bring consumers on a journey in the same way great books and movies tell a story.

Make Sure Your Ad is Relevant

An advertisement should have some sort of relevance to the main content. An ad for cheeseburgers likely wouldn’t perform strongly on a website focused on vegan meal recipes? Avoid the shotgun method to advertise a product and instead target websites and social media channels that actually create conversions. Deploying technology, such as a demand side platform like Acuity!, uncovers those areas your ads will be best served.

Capturing the attention of prospective buyers in a noisy online video environment is still very much possible. But doing so requires marketers to focus on creativity and making connections at a more granular level. Grabbing an audience’s attention is only the beginning; what you do next to keep it is what truly matters.