I-Com Global Summit: 'Most mobile ads are cognitively recognised in less than half a second'

Vassilis Bakopoulos, SVP and head of insights and research, Mobile Marketing Association, USA, opened the final day of the I-Com Global Summit by sharing a study about how much time an ad needs to stay on a screen to trigger attention and cognition.

 

Bakopoulos stated, "We wanted to see what people see and how they react. What's missing is what people think while seeing it and that's what we focus on. We measured attention and cognitive processing."

 

He went on to share the findings:

 

1: Two thirds (67 per cent) of mobile ads are seen and cognitiviely recognised in less than half a second. This number reduces to 42 per cent when it comes to desktops. This is important to note because many advertisers think of these two environments interchangeably. 

 

2: Media vs static: Motion drives emotion. Video ads generate stronger emotional response and quicker. This could be a good or bad response, but it just gets a quicker response. 

 

3: Weak ads start failing early. They create negative responsive in less than a second. Low performing ads create negative motivation early on. They get the attention, but just get negative attention.  This is an important finding because we don’t necessarily have the time we think we have. Mobile ads tend to do a lot more than you think. So we have to ask ourselves if this is the right kind of work to do, 

 

He further explained, "Brands need to have a first second strategy. I’m not talking about a one-second commercial. But we have to maximise our chances of having a first impression which is good."