By Vanessa Lyons, chief executive officer at ThinkNewsBrands
Back in the 70s, studies suggested the average person was exposed to around 1,000 ads per day. Fast-forward to today and estimates range between 4,000 and 10,000.
That is an extraordinary number of ads and an extraordinary number of ads that are simply ignored.
So how do advertisers cut through in this ‘attention economy age’ amidst a sea of other messages?
Vanessa Lyons
Well, according to some of the best in the business, the answer is news publishing.
National head of investment at Mindshare, Nik Doble, says: “quality journalism attracts audiences and keeps them engaged… You can have your eyes off the screen but if I’m consuming an article, I’m 100% engaged. My eyes are on the screen, on the content.”
Doble
Raj Gupta, chief strategy and growth officer at UM Australia, agrees, saying: “if there’s one thing I would recommend people look at news for, it is not just the eyeballs.”
Gupta believes the power of news is its ability to retain readers’ attention so advertisers can get across the information they need to.
“If I’m trying to build a brand, if I’m trying to create attributes for a brand, and I’m trying to get more complex messages across, I’m going to use that news environment because I know that’s a destination where they’re actually spending time, as opposed to just scrolling through feeds.
“I think news in terms of the attention level that it actually brings to the decisions we’re making as media partners is really important.”
Gupta
That point of view is backed up by recent research which found that advertising content in news publishing is highly engaging. A study by FiftyFive5 found that written news is the third most engaging medium, after podcasts and cinema, and that when you add audience scale, it becomes the most impactful. That’s because 75% of readers are fully engaged when reading written news, which helps to keep them gripped and creates lean-in attention moments that are incredibly valuable for advertisers.
Jacquie Alley, chief operating officer at The Media Store, said her agency sees written news in the same way.
Alley
“I think over 60% of Australians are now paying for their news so we’ve got a highly lent in engaged audience.
“News in our planning tools is categorised as two things. One is it offers detailed information and also that extra engagement.”
Find out how news publishing can improve your media mix: [email protected]
ThinkNewsBrands helps advertisers and their agencies understand how advertising in today’s news content drives real business results.
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Top image (L-R): Raj Gupta, Jacquie Alley, and Nik Doble