How is attention to a retail screen measured rather than time spent in front of it?
Attention to a retail screen is measured by detecting whether a shopper actually looked at the screen and for how long, which is reported separately from dwell time 1. Dwell time is captured at the screen or shelf level and shows how long a potential watcher had the chance to be exposed to an ad, so it describes opportunity rather than attention 1. Attention time, by contrast, indicates how long a customer actually watched an ad 1.
How the attention measurement works
- Anonymous video analytics sensors positioned at the screen produce visual engagement metrics such as attention time, glances and distance 1.
- Gaze tracking is used within video analytics to establish where a shopper is looking 2.
- Video analytics calculates separate indexes for attraction, meaning viewing, and attention, meaning the amount of time a customer spends looking at an item, with engagement derived from the correlation between relevance and attention 2.
- A passers-by to onlooker conversion ratio records what share of people near the screen became viewers of it 1.
- A bottom-up methodology uses always-on detection technology at or near the in-store screen, with sensors capturing individuals present in front of or viewing the screen while the ad plays 1.
The gap between exposure and attention is wide enough to justify the separate measurement. Shoppers see a small portion of in-store displays and only briefly on any individual trip, with the typical shopper noticing 32 displays, around 12 percent of those in-store, and most of those notices lasting less than one second 3. Retailers should also publish aggregate or average dwell time alongside a distance matrix of viewability by zone for transparency 1.