xpln.ai Launches Ideal Attention Time, Giving Advertisers a New Way to Align Creative & Media Before a Campaign is Live

xpln.ai, the attention intelligence platform helping advertisers measure, understand, and optimize attention across media environments, today announced the launch of Ideal Attention Time (IAT), a new predictive metric that quantifies how much attention a creative needs to achieve its objective before media investment begins.

The launch addresses a significant challenge in modern advertising. Analysis of campaigns evaluated through the IAT framework found that 75% of impressions fail to generate enough attention for audiences to associate the advertised product with the brand. The finding suggests that a substantial share of media investment is being deployed in environments that do not deliver the attention required for creative assets to fully communicate their message.

For years, advertisers have become increasingly sophisticated at measuring the attention generated by media environments. Yet one critical question has remained unanswered: how much attention does a creative actually need to work? Ideal Attention Time is designed to answer that question.

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Powered by xpln.ai’s proprietary attention intelligence technology, IAT determines the minimum amount of attention required for audiences to recognize a brand, identify a product, and understand a message across different media environments. By introducing a creative-side attention metric into the planning process, IAT helps advertisers make more informed decisions about where and how their campaigns should run.

“Attention has become one of the most important signals in advertising, but until now the industry has focused almost entirely on the media side of the equation,” said Fabien Magalon, CEO and co-founder of xpln.ai. “Advertisers know how much attention different platforms can generate. What they haven’t known is how much attention their creative actually needs. Ideal Attention Time connects those two realities, helping brands place every creative in environments where it has the greatest opportunity to succeed.”

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Ideal Attention Time enables advertisers to:
– Determine how much attention a creative requires before a campaign launches
– Understand whether selected media environments can deliver that level of attention
– Align creative objectives with media planning decisions
– Optimize campaigns toward attention thresholds that drive business outcomes
– Evaluate video assets across YouTube, social platforms, CTV, and the open web in minutes

The technology analyzes every frame of a video creative, identifying approximately fifty visual, audio, and contextual signals including brand presence, product visibility, text, faces, movement, and call-to-action elements. These signals are calibrated against two years of human attention data collected from more than 20,000 panelists and applied to the specific dynamics of each media environment, including YouTube, social platforms, connected TV, and the open web.

Unlike traditional creative testing approaches that require panel recruitment and lengthy turnaround times, IAT delivers results in minutes, enabling advertisers to evaluate creative requirements at scale across markets, languages, and platforms.

“Creative is responsible for a significant share of campaign effectiveness, yet media plans have historically been built without understanding what a creative actually requires to be understood,” added Magalon. “IAT gives advertisers a practical framework for aligning creative ambition with media execution and maximizing the value of every impression.”

“Ideal Attention Time gave us a clear understanding of what our creatives actually require in terms of attention across platforms. We can now either build media plans by aligning placements with the real thresholds each creative needs to drive impact, or optimise media delivery in-flight to ensure those thresholds are met — and ultimately make every impression work harder.” said Marine Gissy, Global Media Lead, AXA

Trusted by leading brands and agencies including Danone, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Volkswagen, Hermès, Publicis, Havas, OMD, Dentsu, GroupM, and The Trade Desk, xpln.ai helps marketers measure, understand, and optimize attention across YouTube, social platforms, connected TV, and the open web.