As of 2013, the average attention span of a human being has dropped below that of the average goldfish.
It is a sad fact that attention spans are dropping around the world.
It seems that there’s so much noise and distraction out there that human race has achieved an unfortunate milestone: as of 2013, the average attention span of a human being has dropped below that of the average goldfish.
In the words of Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon in 1971, a wealth of one thing, in this case information will result in a scarcity of something else – attention.
It’s a situation that must be dealt with head on by brands and marketers seeking engagement. However, for marketers, the truth is slightly more complex. When discussing “attention”, there are two types. One is the six second Vine-style “transient” attention, reflected in the rise of five second skip buttons for YouTube TrueView ads.
The other is the let-me-read-this-five-page-blog-post-style “selective sustained” attention that can last up to 10-40 minutes. Clearly selective sustained attention is the Holy Grail, requiring people to actively decide something is worth their time, and to keep choosing to re-focus their attention to it.
This is exactly what the buzz around content marketing is about: if you provide valuable, relevant information that engages audiences, they move into selective sustained attention mode and are willing to spend time with brands and messages. Video is ideal for this, as it is an excellent vehicle for delivering strong messages in short time spans. Available across different screens, but in the same format, it has been shown to perform significantly better on key brand metrics than other methods.
However, to really deliver on its potential, video needs to adopt the “active / lean forward” engaged user approach to content consumption seen online, moving away from the “passive / lean back” style of TV. The internet experience allows users to click for immediate reaction, link to related information or have their experience personalised according to available data. They can actually engage, follow their own thought process, respond immediately and act upon it.
Viewers of a fashion video should be able to build a shopping basket or read a review during the video, rather than opening a new tab to visit Amazon – effectively forcing them to “cheat” on the brand in question. You can apply the same reasoning to practically any video. In every case, the brand would lose the attention of the viewer, control over the online experience and potential revenue if interactivity, engagement and personalisation are neglected.
Interactive video is about correcting this issue with video as we know it. Taking the traditional broadcast style of video and applying clickable, responsive web functionality unlocks amazing new creative opportunities that can drive measurable results by getting people into a lean forward, engaged mode.
For advertisers, the interactive potential of online video is an excellent means of maximising storytelling potential to capture a user’s attention without leaving the video during playback. Publishers meanwhile grow time spent and invite audiences to click back to other content they have available that relates to the current subject.
This interactivity can be achieved by intelligently layering interactive elements on top of the video, and synchronising the timelines. The intelligent part applies to transparently auto-translating the whole experience to all known formats, screens, platforms and technologies.
And then there’s a whole menu of back-end management, analytics and optimisation tools to make it scale. The end result is a video where every user action helps you better understand your audience and how to optimise and personalise the experience for them.
Interactivity is not a one-trick pony that’s applicable to a single use case or vertical. It’s about moving the whole concept of video forward, across both content and ads. That’s the only way we’re going to change people’s mind-set from lean back to lean forward across all of video.
Interactivity is not a gimmick, only applicable to a small subset of videos. It’s what we should have done a long time ago: create video consumption that mirrors web page consumption and move from the 8 second transient attention span to the sought after selective sustained attention mode to achieve real engagement, interaction and conversion.
