The Long Lunch: Why Attention Is Becoming the Missing Variable in Performance Growth

For years, performance marketing has optimised for speed, scale and efficiency. And for the most part, a performance focused approach has delivered results. However, as media environments become more cluttered and growth become harder to sustain, a body of evidence suggests something fundamental has been overlooked: attention. 

That was the focus of The Long Lunch: Attention & Effectiveness, a session & panel hosted by dentsu in partnership with Newsworks, bringing together leaders from across attention science, effectiveness research and media strategy to explore how attention links exposure to real business outcomes. 

The discussion featured Peter Field, Independent Effectiveness Consultant; Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen Research; Heather Dansie and Niki West from Newsworks; and Katie Hartley, Managing Director of Product & Innovation at dentsu. Together, they made a compelling case that attention is not at odds with performance. Attention is increasingly central to making performance work. 

Performance does not fail because of targeting. It fails because of attention. 

One of the clearest messages from the session was that performance marketing’s challenges are not primarily about audience quality or measurement sophistication. They are about what happens after an ad is served. 

As Peter Field highlighted, brands have leaned heavily into environments that are easy to buy, optimise and scale, yet which often deliver fleeting or fragmented attention. The result has been a system that can drive short‑term response, while struggling to sustain efficiency over time. 

This matters because performance outcomes still rely on memory. If a brand is not recognised, recalled or mentally available, response media has to work harder and cost more to generate the same result. Attention is the mechanism that bridges that gap. 

Why attention duration matters 

Mike Follett’s research at Lumen puts hard numbers behind this challenge. Across digital environments, ads often receive very limited active attention, often well under two seconds. That threshold matters because memory formation is not linear. 

As a working rule of thumb, ads need around two seconds of active attention to create meaningful cognitive impact. Below that level, exposure may register technically yet rarely registers mentally. 

The implication for performance planning is significant. Two impressions delivered in low‑attention environments are not equivalent to one impression delivered with sustained attention. Optimising purely for volume can therefore mask a steady decline in effectiveness. 

Not all digital inventory performs the same 

A key takeaway from the session was that context matters as much as format. Even when ads are identical in size, placement and creative, the environment they appear in has a profound effect on how much attention they receive. 

News brand environments consistently outperform the wider open web on attention metrics. People consume news more slowly, scroll less aggressively and encounter lower ad clutter. Each of these behaviours increases viewable time and attentive exposure. 

Importantly, this is not a comparison between publishers and social platforms. It is a like‑for‑like comparison within digital display. The result is simple but powerful: the same ad delivers more attention in certain environments, and that attention converts into stronger memory and response. 

Attention drives outcomes across the funnel 

To understand what this means commercially, the panel shared large‑scale brand lift analysis linking attention to outcomes such as awareness, consideration, preference and purchase intent. 

Campaigns running in higher‑attention environments consistently delivered stronger uplifts across all of these metrics, with particularly pronounced gains at the lower end of the funnel. Purchase intent, in particular, showed significant improvement when attention levels increased.  

For performance teams, this is critical. Purchase intent is a leading indicator of future conversion efficiency. Improving it upstream reduces pressure downstream, lowering costs and improving scalability. 

Short‑term optimisation creates long‑term cost 

A recurring theme was the industry’s over‑reliance on short‑term ROI signals. While low‑attention channels can deliver immediate response, over‑investment in these environments erodes the brand memory structures that performance relies on. 

Mike Follett described this as a sequencing problem. High‑attention environments play a crucial role in encoding memory. Lower‑attention channels can then trigger those memories efficiently. Without that initial encoding, activation media delivers diminishing returns. 

This helps explain why some performance strategies look strong on paper yet become progressively more expensive to maintain. The system is missing the layer that allows response media to compound rather than decay. 

What this means for modern performance planning 

For iProspect, the takeaway is not to abandon performance channels or chase attention for its own sake. The opportunity is to use attention as a planning input, alongside cost, reach and response metrics. 

Attention data enables performance teams to identify which environments are building memory versus simply generating exposure, balance scalable activation with attention‑rich moments earlier in the journey and improve efficiency over time rather than only in flight. 

This reframes attention as a lever for growth, not a trade‑off. When used well, it reduces waste, improves conversion efficiency and supports sustainable performance at scale. 

Making attention actionable 

Crucially, attention is no longer an abstract concept. As Katie Hartley explained, attention metrics are now integrated directly into dentsu’s planning and optimisation tools. This allows teams to model both short‑ and long‑term outcomes. 

Planners can now move beyond averages and ask more nuanced questions. How much attention is required to drive immediate response versus long‑term growth? Which formats and contexts deliver the highest value per second of attention? How should media be sequenced to maximise return over time? 

These are performance questions, and attention helps answer them. 

Attention as a performance advantage 

As competition intensifies and media environments become more crowded, the brands that win will not simply be those that buy more media, faster. They will be those that earn more attention and use it more intelligently. 

The message from The Long Lunch was clear. Attention is not a distraction from performance. Attention is increasingly the condition that makes performance sustainable.