How to turn advertising attention into long-term brand growth

In marketing, attention is currency.

Much of the goal of advertisements is to capture and hold the focus of their audience. This is known as the attention economy—a space where strategies are designed to guide customers toward a purchase by first grabbing their attention.

As Lumen Research puts it in Attention: The Common Currency of Media, “Your advertising cannot work unless your target audience really looks at it.”

Capturing attention is essential for any marketing strategy, as it creates the foundation for building interest, driving engagement, and ultimately leading to conversion.

An often overlooked benefit of attention marketing, however, is its long-term impact on improving mental availability and driving sustained brand growth.

This article shines a spotlight on the often-undervalued power of attention in brand building. We’ll summarize everything you need to know about this fascinating and evolving area, including: 

• What is attention?
• Why is attention so important to brand growth?
• How can you use attention to drive sales?

What is attention in advertising?

Think of the last ad that truly caught your attention. Maybe it was a silly billboard that made you giggle, or a heartfelt TV spot that had you reaching for the tissues. These moments aren’t accidental—they’re the result of careful strategies designed to grab and hold your attention.

Today, the average person is exposed to between 6,000 and 10,000 advertisements daily. Because our brains are wired to conserve energy (for survival purposes), only a few of these ads will manage to break through the clutter and be remembered.

As the advertising space becomes more crowded, attention has become an even more vital metric to track. 

The decline of attention marketing in the digital age

Since the onslaught of performance marketing strategies ushered in by the digital age, brand building and attention marketing often take a backseat to short-term, conversion-focused tactics.

Share of voice ≠ share of market

One of the classic conventions in marketing is that share of voice directly correlates to share of market—simply put, if your brand is heard more, you’ll hold more market share. 

However, this model is starting to break down for three reasons:

1. Brand-focused campaigns aren’t strong enough. Many modern campaigns lack effective branding, messaging, or emotional impact, meaning they fail to build the mental connections that lead to brand recall and salience.
   
2. Companies are heavily investing in short-term activation, especially in digital formats, which are not as effective in holding viewers’ attention long enough to build mental connections.
   
3. 85% of campaigns don’t surpass the Attention-Memory Threshold of 2.5 seconds, meaning they fail to engage viewers long enough to make an impact.

The problem with this shift is that marketers are increasingly underestimating the role of attention in brand building. Attention is vital because it fosters mental availability, a key driver of sustained long-term growth.

Let’s take a closer look at how attention is connected to key brand metrics.

The impact of aggregate attention on brand lift

Capturing attention isn’t just about getting people to notice your ad; it’s about holding that attention long enough to make it meaningful for your long-term brand goals.

Based on their predictive data models, Lumen Research and Brand Metrics found that longer attention time correlates with higher levels of awareness, consideration, preference, and intent. 

Specifically, the research highlights that the key metric for determining how an ad impacts brand lift is aggregate attention time—the total attention a respondent gives to an advertiser across all impressions they are exposed to.

This means that the longer you can keep someone engaged with your ad, the more likely they are to recognize and remember your brand later.

How to combine attention with branding to activate sales

Attention time alone is not enough to get someone to remember or potentially choose your brand. 

Once attention is captured, pairing it with effective branding is essential to drive sales. The brain makes connections between the attention it gives to an ad and the brand associated with it, increasing the likelihood of purchase.

So, what does this mean for designing your campaigns? Below are a few actionable tips you can use to effectively connect attention with your brand

Introduce your brand early

It’s no secret that attention spans are short these days—expecting someone to watch your video ad for 10-15 seconds is optimistic at best. In reality, very few people stick around that long.

The graph below shows how attention varies across formats. Notice the red line, representing YouTube videos, one of the best-performing digital platforms, where most viewers disengage after just five seconds.

What does this mean for us? It underscores the importance of showcasing your brand early in the video. Starting with your logo or other distinct assets is a smart move—it ensures your brand remains top of mind, even as attention drops. 

Take the Tropicana’s ad below as an example. We tested this campaign using our attention heatmaps feature, which helps us understand where people focus when they see a video or static ad. 

By zooming in on the product and logo early in the ad, they capture attention quickly and with emotion. While attention may dip later in the ad, the brand is already firmly in the viewer’s memory. 

We’re not saying your ad needs to be packed with product shots, but placing your brand at key moments can streamline the message and cut costs. 

Introducing your brand early on leaves consumers with a clear, lasting impression, making it far more likely they’ll remember and choose you when it matters most.

Place your brand assets near focal points

When designing an ad, certain elements like faces, animals, or actions are known to naturally capture attention. But to truly benefit from these attention-grabbing elements in the long run, they must be associated with your brand.

Let’s take a look at an example to better understand this: When you see the packaging below, where do your eyes go first?

As you can see from the heatmap below, the typical focus is on the cat and the Whiskas branding.

This is a great example of how strategically placing a logo front and center, just above another strong focal point, ensures that the branding easily draws attention.

The key takeaway here is that secondary elements, like slogans or logos, often go unnoticed. These parts of an ad capture only a small percentage of viewers’ attention, mostly from people who are seeing the content for the second or third time and are actively paying attention. 

This difference in focus is especially important for smaller brands. For them, capturing attention is more challenging—they need to place their brand at the center of focus, or they risk being overlooked.

Final thoughts

Attention is more than a fleeting moment; it’s the foundation of long-term brand growth. By capturing and holding your audience’s focus, you create opportunities to build mental availability and foster deeper connections with your brand.

However, attention alone isn’t enough. To see results, it must be paired with strategic branding—introducing your brand early, placing assets near focal points, and making your message memorable. 

In the attention economy, every second counts. By prioritizing attention and pairing it with strategic branding, you can turn your ads into powerful tools that not only catch viewers’ eyes but also lead to meaningful, long-term growth for your brand.