This session, part of a series of exclusive events held at the dentsu Beach House during Cannes Lions 2025, focused on how attention can be a game-changer in commerce and emphasized the need for continuous innovation and adaptation to changing consumer preferences.
Moderator
Tifenn Cloarec, Global Head of Strategy, iProspect
Panelists
Les Binet, Author
Mike Follett, CEO, Lumen Research
Henna Mertsola, Global Head of Media, Carlsberg
Dan Friel, Global Client President, iProspect
Understanding Attention
To kick off the conversation, Tifenn asked Mike to give the audience a brief overview of how Lumen and dentsu have spent the last six years evolving our understanding of attention. He explained our first objective was to understand the volume of attention given to different media channels. For example, “We all know that TV advertising probably gets more attention than posters or Out-of-Home, but how much more?”
Secondly, Lumen and dentsu sought to understand the cost of attention by linking data from numerous large studies to how much money consumers pay for things. Where are the bargains in the markets? Where are the arbitrage opportunities? Where do consumers invest their money? How can brands avoid occupying the vast majority of ads that are ignored entirely?
Thirdly, knowing the value of attention – how both visual and audio attention convert into memory, persuasion, recall and, of course, money – has always been at the core of the dentsu focus on what matters most, which is outcome. “It’s a really exciting journey from understanding the volume of the attention that you get from different media to the cost to now the value, but there’s so much more to learn.”
Carlsberg’s Attention Strategy
Hannah recalled Carlsberg’s early work with dentsu to identify what factors are driving their success. Is it the strength of the brand? Is it creative? Is it messaging frequency? Is it multiple touchpoints?
Working with Lumen and dentsu, Carlsberg created one of the industry’s first brand models. They’ve now gone beyond the theory of attention to activations using their model’s attention data. They’ve become faster at testing, faster at knowing the consumer journey and faster at understanding different touchpoints. “I love the idea of attention because it’s really simple. For our creative to work, it needs to be seen. And to me it’s a lot of common sense. It’s not about maximizing attention. … For us [it’s] understanding how much attention we need in each of the touchpoints to reach our brand objectives.”
iProspect’s Attention Expertise
At iProspect, we’re always searching for a competitive advantage for our clients. As Dan put it, “What’s the thing that creates an uneven playing field which is tilted in favor of [our client]? … This is what attention does.
“In order to keep that competitive advantage you’ve got to innovate, you’ve got to continually experiment, you’ve got to make sure you measure anything and everything you can, and our job is always to look for that edge and to continue looking for that edge because we know if we stay still then our competition is going to catch up on us.”
Marketers, Think Like Ordinary People
Les shifted the focus to what he believes is at the heart of marketing. ”Stop thinking like marketers and advertisers and media owners and all that sort of thing and start thinking like ordinary people.” He went on to say ordinary people don’t care about brands or products or ads, and they usually ignore ads altogether. “They screen them out.”
Attention and the Funnel
Tiffen moved to close the conversation with a discussion of the roles advertising can play throughout the sales funnel.
“There’s still a lot of creative effort that is put into brand building versus conversion. What should creative and media do together to raise attention closer to the point of commerce?”
To hear the panelists’ responses and their thoughts on the future of attention in advertising, watch the video replay here.
For more from Cannes Lions 2025, read dentsu’s Cannes Rewind Report here.
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