{"id":1955,"date":"2026-07-07T15:26:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2026-07-07T15:27:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:27:41","slug":"paying-attention-to-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/paying-attention-to-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying Attention to Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During her presentation to the Advertising: Who Cares? event<\/a> last month, IPSOS\u2019 Samira Brophy quoted Charles Vallance, Founder of VCCP in a piece he called The Tyranny of Targeting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cModern media analytics is in danger of reducing the medium back to being the medium alone. If we continue down this path, we may end up on a fool\u2019s errand, mistaking accuracy for effectiveness and precision for persuasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This is not a new thought (Charles\u2019 original piece appeared in \u2018Campaign\u2019 over ten years ago) but it is one we have studiously ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, big numbers rule. It is extraordinary how so many smart people can become obsessed with a metric that is both so superficial and at the same time so provably (and ironically) so meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people, including Omar Oakes<\/a> and Karen Nelson-Field have used the descriptor cost-per-meaningless-thousand. As Karen puts it in Omar\u2019s opinion piece: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing about effectiveness and efficiency that comes with CPM\u2026. yet we all rely on it every day of our lives, as if the cheaper it is, the better it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Omar concludes: That\u2019s why CPMs are misleading: they ignore attention and treat all impressions as equal, turning \u201ccost per thousand\u201d into a \u201ccost per meaningless thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one sense we have come a long way. Many old gits like me will recount how we\u2019ve always used \u2018attention\u2019 to particular formats, and positions in planning. That is true, in the sense that we all instinctively knew that first-in-break generated more attention (less time to leave the room to put the kettle on\u2026) and that outside back-covers were widely noticed by those not reading the magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we don\u2019t have to rely only on instinct. Karen Nelson-Field\u2019s business, Amplified has been working away using AI to find patterns in the approximately 50 billion data points collected over close to a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An independent South African media agency, Connect, part of the UP and Up Group has negotiated the rights to what is called AttentionAI across African markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several things interesting about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, it\u2019s an indie agency, and its Chief Operating Officer Scott Reinders that has spotted the potential and moved to do something with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second the potential lies in using attention as a planning aid not \u2018just\u2019 as a post-campaign evaluation metric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For something to be used to write plans across a range of advertisers it needs to be based on robust, trusted data. 50 billion data points would seem at first glance to meet the robust threshold; Karen Nelson-Field is clearly a trusted researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a planning aid AttentionAI can be used to guide creative output by platform, and within platform. What creative formats work best within what channel formats?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It therefore plays a significant role bringing creative and media planning closer together, and at a stage in the process before any money is spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, attention is being used not as one element within a post-mortem but as a part of the upfront decision no doubt alongside other tools within Connect\u2019s toolkit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This case also shows what can be done with AI. This is not always the bogeyman; it often opens doors to create products of great value particularly when let loose on massive datasets built robustly, and with rigour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the bricks are top quality, and you hire a skilled architect you\u2019ll end up with a building that lasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During her presentation to the Advertising: Who Cares? event last month, IPSOS\u2019 Samira Brophy quoted Charles Vallance, Founder of VCCP in a piece he called The Tyranny of Targeting: \u201cModern media analytics is in danger of reducing the medium back to being the medium alone. If we continue down this path, we may end up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1958,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/1958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}