This is according to Karen Nielson-Field, an author and founder of Amplified, who addressed this issue in her presentation, The Attention Revolution at the recent Up&Up Group's Elevate event.
Her starting point is that the current metrics used in the industry are flawed.
Flawed, she says, because they don’t reflect true audience engagement.
And this, she says, is the Achilles Heel of Measurement.
Why? “Because the industry still relies on viewability standards, despite research showing that this has little to no correlation with actual attention.”
She maintains that around 75% of inventory rated “viewable” gets zero attention, while only 25% of impressions deliver actual attention.
“This means there is huge financial wastage in media spend.”
To understand this, she explains that Time in View does not equal Attention – “Just because an ad is technically 'on screen” doesn’t mean people are watching”.
In fact, biometrics research shows a big gap between what platforms report and what users actually look at. The reality is that a user’s attention drops sharply after the first second as audiences skip, scroll, or get distracted.
On average, only about 20% of impressions are actively seen, while 80% are wasted.
Nielson-Field says that while legacy media like TV or cinema had captive audiences, smartphones have a small stage, and it is noisy and full of distractions, making it far harder for ads to hold attention.
She adds that just to make it more complex, user experiences across different platforms (YouTube skips, TikTok/Reels swiping, Snapchat interactions) also train audiences to behave differently.
“As a result, impressions on different platforms don’t equal the same attention value, but advertisers often pay as if they do.”
If the advertising industry is overestimating reach and effectiveness due to outdated metrics, with real attention far lower than reported, this means that brands face massive hidden wastage.
What needs to happen is that measurement must evolve beyond “time in view” toward biometrics and true attention metrics.
Nielson-Field gave the interesting fact that people scroll the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty’s height (300 ft) daily, and that scrolling on the web is 1,000 times faster than on TikTok – and scrolling on TikTok is already fast.
This, she says, demonstrates just how fleeting impressions actually are.
“The two-second rule says that 85% of digital impressions last under 2.5 seconds,” she says. And this is below the threshold needed to form or refresh memory.
This means that ads under this threshold have little chance of creating brand recall unless the brand already has very strong, distinctive assets.
So if the majority of ads have digital impressions of under 2.5 seconds, does this mean brands need to stop advertising? Nielson-Field says this is not the solution because is when advertising stops or goes unseen, brand awareness, sales, and equity decline.
Attention drops steeply with time, as she explains, from 80% of audience in second 1, to 50% by second 2 and 20% by second 3.
“What this means it that if the brand or its branding isn’t visible early in the ad, it does not build memory or recognition.
When this happens, the audience’s brains default to the brands they are familiar with, and this is not necessarily your brand - it could be your competitors, and in fact, it often is.
“Ads without early branding risk their impressions being misattributed to larger competitors, especially if there are similarities.
“Brands can lose out when they under-brand content on platforms like TikTok, as attention seconds are too short for subtlety,” she says.
This is true for all brands, even global players.
Added to this is that younger consumers are not trained by traditional TV anymore. So, she says, brands need to continuously reinforce distinctive assets with new category buyers - or risk losing them to competitors.
Nielson-Field gives the example where McDonald’s assumed strong recognition with youth and ran TikTok ads for nuggets without the Golden Arches.
The ads were misattributed to competitors (KFC and others).
“This shows showing even big brands can lose distinctiveness when branding is weak.“Without fast, distinctive, and memorable branding, most ad spend is wasted — or worse, helps competitors,” she emphasises.
When advertisers pay for impressions that either go unseen or benefit competitors instead, Nielsen-Field calls this “Cost per Meaningless Thousand”.
“CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is misleading when most impressions aren’t truly seen. Attention seconds, not impressions, are the real currency of advertising."
In keeping with this, Nielson-Field aimed to quantify the financial penalty of dull, low-attention media through a research study (together with Peter Field and Adam Morgan).
The research found that:
The research found that in the US alone in 2024, this is a wastage of $198bn annually due to dull/low-attention media.
For individual advertisers, this equates to ~43 cents of every $1 wasted.
“There is a clear performance drop from high-attention to low-attention campaigns, and this leads to a 30% reduction in brand conversion efficiency,” says Nielson-Field.
“Weak branding and dull, low-attention campaigns don’t just reduce effectiveness — they create massive financial waste, with nearly half of media spend delivering little to no value,” she states.
She describes many digital formats as “fast decay”, that is, high scrolling, low attention seconds, poor cost efficiency, and fewer memories created.
“Media format largely determines how much attention is possible (e.g., 2 seconds on Facebook, 3.5 seconds on TikTok, 10+ seconds on YouTube),” she says.
Where does this leave creative? “Creative cannot overcome poor formats — even brilliant creative won’t stop fast scrolling,” she says.
However, she adds, “Creative is the key driver of sales once attention is secured.”
To overcome the problem that 85% of digital ads don’t meet the memory threshold, brands must show their distinctive assets – logos, colours, etc.
She points out that while this will not increase attention time, it will massively boost ROI per second of attention.
What this means is that distinctive ads can trigger brand recognition in as little as 1.5 seconds (vs. 2.5s average).
“Therefore, creative and distinctiveness convert that fleeting attention into brand impact and sales,” she says.
For her, the best defence against attention wastage is the combination of smart media choices and strong brand assets.
As she puts it,” You can’t 'design your way out' of fast-scroll feeds, but you can make every second count by pairing the right media with distinctive creative assets.”
Dr Karen Nelson-Field, a media science researcher who has revolutionised global media measurement an advisor to major global brands, is the founder of Amplified. Amplified has worked with The Up&Up Group and some of its key clients to deliver the country’s first-ever human data on how digital advertising is actually consumed in the country. She is a sought-after speaker and author of bestsellers Viral Marketing: The Science of Sharing, The Attention Economy: How Media Works, and the globally groundbreaking The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint. Her work has been featured in top publications, including Bloomberg Business, CNBC, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.
