Audio outperforms video for attention and brand recall

In the face of increased privacy protections on platforms like iOS, cookie deprecation, and more restrictive privacy regulations, many agencies and brands are turning toward alternative measurement KPIs such as attention.

Dentsu, who have been an early champion of attention, recently partnered with Lumen Research and a handful of premium publishers / adtech providers (Amazon Ads, Audacy, Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia, Spotify and SXM Media) to study the impact of audio advertising vs. video.

A first-of-its-kind study of audio advertising across three major formats found it performs better than video in grabbing attention and generating brand recall, research that could have a positive impact on a relatively overlooked portion of the media industry.

The study was conducted by attention research firm Lumen and commissioned by Dentsu, with Amazon Ads, Audacy, Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia, Spotify and SXM Media participating. The research was part of the Dentsu Attention Economy project, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, and compared against a large database of studies mostly on video ad formats generated by that project.

Among the findings were that 41% of audio ads generated correct brand recall in follow-up surveys, compared to a 38% norm for other advertising, mostly video, in Dentsu’s database. The average impact on brand choice metrics was a positive 10% for audio vs. a 6% norm in Dentsu’s database for other ads. Audio advertising produced average attentive seconds of 10,126 per thousand impressions, more than 50% higher than the norms of 6,501 in Dentu’s database of prior studies.

Full story at AdAge.