Looking Beyond CTR: Unlock the Power of Attention Metrics

Key Insights

• Viewability - whether an ad appeared in the browser viewport - is an outdated baseline that tells advertisers almost nothing about whether a real person actually saw the ad: attention metrics go further by measuring genuine human engagement with the ad unit, accounting for factors like time on screen, scroll behavior, and whether competing content was also visible at the same moment.
• Auto-refreshing ad units systematically inflate viewability scores without generating real attention: a page that refreshes ad positions every 5 to 15 seconds can accumulate thousands of technically "viewable" impressions while the user is focused on reading a recipe or scrolling past the ad, making viewability an easily gamed metric that overstates actual advertising value.
• Adelaide's AU (attention unit) metric reveals a market inefficiency that cannabis advertisers can exploit: two above-the-fold placements on the same premium publisher clearing at identical CPMs can have attention scores that differ by a factor of two or more - meaning the programmatic auction systematically prices placements without accounting for their actual attention quality, creating opportunities for advertisers who select inventory by AU score to get significantly more real consumer attention per dollar spent.
• Premium publisher pricing reflects brand association demand - advertisers wanting their ad on a site their leadership reads - rather than actual placement-level attention quality, which means a cannabis brand paying premium CPMs for "prestige" publisher inventory may be getting significantly less real attention than a campaign that selects placements based on measured AU scores at lower price points.
• For cannabis advertisers specifically, buying on attention rather than raw viewability or CPM is a meaningful efficiency gain: cannabis marketing budgets are typically more constrained than general market budgets, and directing spend toward placements that actually generate consumer attention - rather than impressions that technically occurred - produces stronger brand-building outcomes per dollar invested.

Webinar Highlights

00:00 – Why Attention Metrics Are the Next Evolution in Programmatic Measurement

Jake Litkey introduces the topic and guests: Ted Montanis of MediaJel and Tyler Detour, VP of Sales at Adelaide - the leading attention metrics measurement company. Tyler explains Adelaide's mission: spreading attention metrics across the advertising ecosystem to give buyers a better signal of actual ad impact than viewability or CPM alone. Tyler's background includes nine years at Nielsen before joining Adelaide, giving him deep measurement expertise on both the buy and sell sides.

06:00 – What's Wrong With Viewability as a Standard

The conversation opens with a direct critique of viewability as a meaningful advertising metric. Viewability simply asks whether an ad appeared in the browser viewport - it says nothing about whether a person was looking at it, engaged with the surrounding content, or even had the page in focus. The discussion uses the Daily Mail as an illustrative example: multiple users loading the same page at the same moment see different ads, and those ads may refresh automatically every 5 to 15 seconds - generating technically viewable impressions while the user's attention is entirely elsewhere.

12:00 – Ad Refresh and the Viewability Manipulation Problem

Tyler details how auto-refreshing ad placements exploit the viewability standard: publishers can configure ad positions to refresh on a timed cadence, generating repeated viewable impressions from a single user session without any corresponding increase in actual attention. A user reading a recipe on a lifestyle site may generate dozens of "viewable impressions" across an ad unit that refreshes every 10 seconds - and advertisers paying for those impressions are paying for a measurement artifact rather than real consumer engagement.

18:00 – What Adelaide's AU Score Actually Measures

Adelaide's attention unit (AU) score measures whether an ad received genuine human attention - not just whether it was technically in the viewport. The score incorporates factors like time the ad was in view, user scroll behavior, screen real estate occupied, and environmental signals that indicate whether a person was actively engaging with the surrounding content. Higher AU scores correlate with actual brand impact outcomes - recall, consideration, and purchase intent - in ways that viewability scores alone do not.

24:00 – The Placement Value Gap: Same CPM, Very Different Attention

One of the most striking findings discussed is what happens when AU scores are applied to placements on a single premium publisher. Among ten above-the-fold placements all clearing at identical CPMs, the highest AU score can be double the lowest AU score. The programmatic auction has no mechanism for pricing this difference - market clearing prices reflect demand for the publisher brand, not the attention quality of specific ad positions. This creates a systematic opportunity for advertisers who select inventory by AU score to get significantly more real attention per impression than the CPM would suggest.

30:00 – Implications for Cannabis Advertisers Buying Attention

Ted and Jake discuss what these findings mean for cannabis brands specifically. Cannabis advertising budgets are typically more constrained than general market budgets, which makes efficiency at the placement level more consequential. A cannabis brand that shifts from buying on CPM or viewability to buying on AU score can direct spend toward the placements that actually generate consumer attention - rather than paying for impressions that technically occurred but produced no real engagement. This is the practical argument for attention metrics as a cannabis marketing optimization tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

[ {What are attention metrics in programmatic advertising?}

Attention metrics are measurement signals that go beyond viewability to assess whether a digital ad actually received genuine human attention. While viewability simply checks whether an ad appeared in the browser viewport, attention metrics incorporate factors like how long the ad was in view, user scroll and interaction behavior, screen real estate occupied, and environmental signals about whether the user was actively engaged with nearby content. Companies like Adelaide produce attention unit (AU) scores that correlate with real brand impact outcomes - recall, consideration, purchase intent - in ways that viewability scores do not.

{Why is viewability not enough as an advertising metric?}

Viewability measures whether an ad appeared in the browser viewport - it does not measure whether a person looked at it, noticed it, or processed it in any meaningful way. Auto-refreshing ad units can generate thousands of technically viewable impressions from a single user session without generating any real consumer attention. Different users loading the same page see different ads, creating further complexity in what a viewable impression actually represents. As a result, viewability is an easily manipulated metric that overstates advertising value and provides a weak signal of actual campaign effectiveness.

{What is Adelaide's AU score?}

Adelaide's AU (attention unit) score is an attention measurement metric that quantifies the quality of consumer attention an ad placement receives. It is calculated using signals including time in view, scroll behavior, screen real estate, and contextual factors that indicate active user engagement. AU scores are used to compare the real attention value of different ad placements - even those with identical CPMs or viewability rates - and to predict brand impact outcomes like recall and purchase intent more accurately than traditional programmatic metrics.

{How do attention metrics benefit cannabis advertisers?}

Attention metrics allow cannabis advertisers to direct spend toward placements that actually generate real consumer attention, rather than paying for impressions that technically occurred but produced no meaningful engagement. Because cannabis marketing budgets are typically more constrained than general market budgets, the efficiency gain from buying on AU score versus CPM or viewability is proportionally more valuable. A campaign optimized for attention delivers stronger brand-building outcomes per dollar spent - which matters significantly in a category where brand differentiation and consumer trust are built over many impressions.

{What is the placement value gap in programmatic advertising?}

The placement value gap refers to the difference in actual attention quality between ad positions that clear at the same CPM in a programmatic auction. Research from Adelaide has found that among multiple above-the-fold placements on a single publisher, all priced identically, the highest-attention placement can generate double the AU score of the lowest-attention placement. This gap exists because programmatic auctions price inventory based on publisher brand demand and broad targeting signals, not on placement-level attention quality - creating a systematic inefficiency that attention-aware advertisers can exploit. ]