Not All Attention Is Created Equal: Understanding Advertising Effectiveness Across Digital Platforms
Blog post by Hannah Das & Lisette Kruizinga-de Vries, based on the master thesis of Hannah.
Every day, consumers encounter numerous digital advertisements across platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. Yet despite brands investing heavily in online video advertising, capturing attention has become increasingly difficult. Consumers skip, scroll and swipe through content faster than ever before, forcing marketers to compete in an environment where attention is one of the scarcest resources.
While campaign results often show that advertisements perform differently across platforms, it is not always clear why. Is a campaign successful because the creative is better, or because the platform itself creates a more effective viewing environment?
This study explored this question using behavioural and survey data from more than 25,000 consumers across seven countries, comprising over 50,000 advertisement-level responses. Rather than focusing solely on creative quality, the research examined how the structural characteristics of digital advertising formats, including viewing duration, sound activation and platform context, influence brand recall and advertisement effectiveness.
The findings reveal an important insight for marketers: it is not simply the amount of attention an advertisement receives that matters, but the quality and context of that attention.
Digital Advertising Environments are Fundamentally different
Although online video advertisements may contain similar creative content, consumers experience them very differently depending on where they appear.
Pre-roll advertisements interrupt viewers before their chosen content begins and require them to watch at least part of the advertisement before skipping. While this guarantees exposure, it can also increase irritation and lead to more passive attention. Social feed advertisements are integrated naturally into scrolling feeds and can be ignored immediately. Social reel advertisements are embedded within an endless stream of short-form content where users rapidly swipe from one video to the next.
The formats also differ in their sound defaults. Pre-roll and reel advertisements generally begin with sound, whereas social feed advertisements autoplay silently unless viewers actively enable audio. These structural differences shape not only how long consumers watch advertisements, but also how effectively they process and remember them.
Study set-up
The study analysed 50,000+ advertisement-level observations from 25,000+ respondents across seven countries: Czechia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The data was collected using DVJ Insights' advertising pre-test surveys. Respondents completed the study on their own devices in a simulated digital environment that closely resembled real online browsing behaviour.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three environments: pre-roll advertisements, social feed advertisements or social reel advertisements. Rather than watching advertisements in isolation, respondents browsed websites containing editorial content and display advertisements, creating a realistic digital experience. Behavioural measures such as the share of the advertisement watched and, where applicable, whether respondents activated sound were recorded. Afterwards, respondents completed questions measuring unaided brand recall, advertisement evaluations and perceptions of creative quality.
Figure 1: Illustration of 1. pre-roll, 2. social feed (i.e., Facebook), and 3. social reel (i.e., TikTok) advertisements
Attention remains one of the Strongest Drivers of Brand Recall
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the strongest findings concerns attention itself. The longer respondents watched an advertisement, the more likely they were to remember the advertised brand. Even relatively small increases in viewing duration produced meaningful improvements in recall. A 10 percentage point increase in viewing duration increased the odds of brand recall by approximately 22%.
However, viewing duration proved to be only part of the story.
Not all Attention is Equally Valuable
Pre-roll advertisements generated the highest viewing durations, perhaps because viewers were required to watch the first five seconds before they were allowed to skip. Social feed advertisements attracted the least viewing time on average, while social reel advertisements fell in between.
Yet the effectiveness of viewing duration depended on where that attention occurred.
While viewers voluntarily chose to continue watching both social feed and social reel advertisements, every extra second spent watching a social feed advertisement produced substantially larger improvements in brand recall than the same amount of viewing time in either pre-roll or social reel environments.
This suggests that while social feed advertisements may struggle to capture initial attention, the attention they do earn is particularly valuable. It is not that people watch more of a social feed advertisement; on average they do not in comparison with the other formats, but when they choose to keep watching, that attention translates into memory much more effectively.
Social reel advertisements showed a different pattern. Although respondents often watched a relatively larger share of these advertisements than social feed advertisements, longer viewing translated into much smaller improvements in brand recall.
Several explanations may account for this finding. First, short-form platforms expose users to a continuous stream of highly stimulating content. Consumers rapidly process large amounts of information, making it more difficult for brands to move from attention into long-term memory. Even when viewers watch a reel advertisement for longer, the constant flow of competing content may reduce deeper cognitive processing.
Secondly, many reel advertisements are intentionally designed to blend naturally into the platform and closely resemble organic content. While this creates a seamless viewing experience, it may also mean that viewers continue watching without immediately recognising the content as advertising, or without sufficiently encoding the featured brand into memory.
In other words, more viewing does not necessarily result in more brand memory.
Sound makes a difference, but only a few people turn it on
Sound activation was analysed only for social feed advertisements, where videos autoplay silently. Interestingly, only around 6% of viewers chose to activate sound. Among those viewers, however, the impact was substantial. Advertisements viewed with sound enabled generated more than six times higher odds of brand recall than advertisements viewed without sound. This finding highlights the potential value of audio in strengthening advertising memory.
However, it should also be interpreted carefully. Since respondents decided for themselves whether to activate sound, the results may partly reflect a self-selection effect. More engaged viewers may naturally have been more likely both to turn on the sound and to remember the brand afterwards. Consequently, the relationship cannot be interpreted as purely causal.
Nevertheless, the findings have a clear practical implication. Because the overwhelming majority of viewers do not activate sound in social feeds, advertisers should ensure that their advertisements communicate effectively even without audio. Visual storytelling, captions and prominent branding remain essential, while audio should serve as an enhancement rather than a necessity.
Creative Quality still matters
Creative quality remained one of the strongest predictors of advertising performance. More creative advertisements generated longer viewing durations, higher brand recall and stronger advertisement evaluations.
Interestingly, creative quality did not contribute equally across all platforms. Its effect on brand recall was strongest for pre-roll and social feed advertisements, while the relationship was noticeably weaker for social reel advertisements.
This again points to the unique nature of reel environments. Creativity alone may not be sufficient when consumers are immersed in an endless stream of entertainment-focused content. Instead, advertisers may benefit from combining strong creative execution with clear and prominent branding from the very beginning of the advertisement.
Price Information: Memorable, but less Likeable
The research also examined the role of explicit price information. Advertisements that included price cues were more likely to be remembered, increasing the likelihood of brand recall. At the same time, those advertisements received slightly lower overall evaluations.
This suggests a trade-off between memorability and appeal. While price information provides concrete, decision-relevant information that helps consumers remember the advertisement, it may simultaneously make the advertisement feel more promotional and less emotionally engaging.
The appropriate balance therefore depends on campaign objectives. Awareness or sales activation campaigns may benefit from highlighting prices, whereas brand-building campaigns may achieve stronger emotional engagement by placing greater emphasis on storytelling.
What does this mean for Marketers?
Keep viewers watching: Campaigns focused on brand recall should prioritise retaining viewer attention. Even relatively small increases in viewing duration substantially improve recall. One effective way to achieve this is by investing in creative quality, which not only increases brand recall but also improves advertisement evaluations.
Capture attention quickly in social feeds: Social feed advertisements struggle to earn initial attention, but once viewers decide to continue watching, every additional second delivers particularly strong improvements in brand recall. Attention-grabbing openings and engaging creatives are therefore especially important in feed environments, where capturing viewers' attention in the first few seconds can encourage them to keep watching and, in turn, improve brand recall. As many viewers watch without sound, these openings should rely primarily on strong visual elements rather than audio to communicate the message effectively.
Brand early in social reels: More viewing does not automatically translate into more brand memory on short-form platforms. Because reel advertisements often resemble organic content and compete with an endless stream of entertainment, advertisers may benefit from introducing branding early and prominently to ensure that attention becomes memory.
Look beyond exposure metrics: Viewing duration is an important predictor of success, but it does not tell the whole story. Creative quality and platform context continued to influence recall even after accounting for viewing duration. In other words, not all attention seconds are equally valuable across platforms.
Final thoughts
As digital advertising becomes increasingly fragmented, marketers can no longer assume that the same creative will perform equally well across platforms. This research demonstrates that while attention remains essential for building brand recall, the context in which that attention is generated matters just as much. The challenge is no longer simply attracting attention; it is designing platform-specific creatives that convert attention into brand memory.