The New Currency of Attention

Catch the key takeaways

In our latest webinar, Amsive’s experts explored the new currency of attention—how brands can break through today’s overwhelming content landscape and connect meaningfully in an era where attention is short, loyalty is fleeting, and personalization can backfire.

Brand success now depends on how well you balance media, creative, and audience understanding to capture human focus and algorithmic favor.

Here are the top five takeaways from the conversation:

1. Attention is engineered, not earned

In a choice overload economy, marketers can’t rely on reach alone. Winning attention means designing for both people and platforms. Ads must feel native to each environment, make an impact within three seconds, and inspire interaction.

Algorithms reward engagement, consistency, and recency, so brands need creative that performs for the feed while still feeling unmistakably their own. The most effective content balances human connection with algorithmic visibility.

2. Creative quality drives nearly half of results

Media plans and audience targeting only go so far. Nielsen found that 47% of sales lift comes from the creative itself. Distinctive, memorable creative separates brands from the noise, and drives measurable performance.

If you can cover your logo and swap in a competitor’s without losing meaning, your creative isn’t yet distinctive enough. Strong creative should build familiarity, relevance, and emotional resonance that make your brand impossible to forget.

3. Relevance beats personalization

Consumers are turned off by over-targeting. The focus should shift from personalization to contextual relevance, focusing on messages that are helpful, not invasive.

Instead of “Hey there, we saw you looked at running shoes three times last night,” try “Still shopping for running shoes? Here’s our most popular style for fall!”

Relevance comes from understanding needs and timing, not tracking every move. When done right, it builds trust and drives action without crossing privacy boundaries.

4. Brand loyalty is an illusion

Modern loyalty doesn’t last. People buy what’s top of mind, not what they pledged allegiance to last year. Maintaining visibility and cross-channel consistency is the only way to keep attention and drive repeat engagement.

Brands that stay in market, balance upper- and lower-funnel activity, and continuously test and optimize earn both new and returning customers. Relevance, not repetition, is what keeps audiences connected over time.

5. Evolving research reveals why attention shifts

Research has consistently shown that brands need to adapt their content for shorter attention spans and changing expectations. Surveys should be brief, targeted, and supported by qualitative insights and social listening.

Understanding emotional drivers, why consumers act and not just who they are, helps predict switching behavior and shape creative that resonates. Emotional insight turns data into decisions, from identifying new opportunities to improving loyalty strategies in healthcare, financial services, and beyond

FAQs: The New Currency of Attention

What does “engineered attention” mean?

Engineering attention is about intentionally designing media and creative strategies that work with algorithms and human behavior. Effective content performs within each platform’s context and earns engagement naturally.

Why is creative quality so important?

According to Nielsen, nearly half of sales impact comes from creative execution. Even the best media plan fails if the creative doesn’t connect emotionally or clearly express brand distinctiveness.

How can brands personalize responsibly?

Make sure your messaging is helpful, not invasive. Use behavioral and contextual cues to tailor messaging without relying on sensitive personal data or hyper-specific tracking.

Is brand loyalty declining?

Yes. Consumers are constantly distracted and open to switching. Brands that remain visible, consistent, and emotionally resonant maintain an edge, even among previous customers.

How should research evolve in the current marketing environment?

Brands should focus on efforts that allow them to market smarter, and with content that’s more emotionally informed. Combine quick surveys with social listening, attitudinal segmentation, and qualitative insights to uncover why people act, not just what they do.

Dive into the transcript

Introduction

Dawn Tucker (00:06):

Hi there. Welcome. This is a webinar in the New Currency of Attention. I’m Dawn Tucker, I run Brand Strategy here at Amsive, and we’re going to get started in a second while when we’re done with this, we will be sending over the deck as well as a video so that you can replay it and see the content that’s within this. So no need to rush and jot down or do screenshots. We’ll be sending this all to you after. We also encourage you to really put in any questions you might have within the chat. We are going to reserve the last 10 minutes for questions and we’ll get to as many of them as we can and really welcome a little bit of that interaction with you. So joining me today, I have two colleagues. One is Eva Gott, who is a partner and head of research at Think Insights. Eva. I have been partnering together on research studies for over at this point, anything from wine, water, healthcare, probably everything in between. So I have a really long history of working together and really value Eva’s insights. And also with me is my colleague here at am, Alyssa Windle, who does runs all of media planning and strategy. So welcome to both of you. Thank you for joining me today.

Eva Gott (01:29):

Thank you for having us, Dawn.

Dawn Tucker (01:29):

I’m going to hop right into it. So today we’re living in a choice overload economy. We all know, right? There’s too many ads, there’s too many things going on, you don’t know where to look or what to focus on. So you have to really think harder nowadays about how to garner that attention. So we’re going to be going through a bunch of questions today that kind of get at that from different angles and kind of how to be thinking about this, whether it’s the number of impressions and what constitutes quality to how to really get that attention and how to be thinking about your brand, what research you should be doing, and also things to be thinking about today, right?

So we’ve started the fourth quarter, we got another couple months still left of the year. Is there anything that you can be doing today to really prepare yourself, prepare your brands for 2026? So with that, our first topic is about attention. So nowadays as we know the rules have changed, so attention is no longer earned, it’s engineered. So to kind of start this conversation, Alyssa, if you can speak a little bit about that shift from earned to engineered from a media perspective and what that should that means today.

The shift from earned to engineered attention

Alyssa Windle (02:55):

Yeah, absolutely. So from a media perspective, we have to now think about how we’re planning for both the algorithm and for people. So it’s not just about reach, it’s not just about getting in front of the people as we traditionally had planned in the past, but it’s about showing up with the right message in the right context to really resonate and drive that engagement because ultimately that is what will feed the algorithm.

So algorithms are favoring things like timing, recency engagement as well to keep that content visible. And so we have to keep that in mind and make sure that we are staying consistent and feeding those algorithms. And then the messaging has to be memorable. The creative is really what matters to the people. So ultimately it’s the combination of the algorithms and the people and having that combination is critical to garnering that attention overall.

Creative strategies that feed the algorithm

Dawn Tucker (03:47):

Thank you. And then when we think a little bit about how creative feeds the algorithm, the first one, and this is something we’ve been talking about to our clients for years, it feels like now, but when you’re looking at different channels, different platforms, really think about making your creative so that it feels native and not generic. It’s not about just resizing to fit between TikTok and YouTube and all the different channels. We really need to think about how do we blend into that experience and stand out without sticking out.

The second thing really is looking to optimize for early engagement. You only have three seconds to make that impression. I think like a few years ago I feel like that was double, it was six seconds, now it’s three seconds. So when you think about that right, long gone are those days where creating a more cinematic TV spot that will run where maybe towards the end of it you finally reveal who the brand was.

You really need to get some of that information in those three seconds to really start engaging people. And then three, how do we drive repeatable interactions? So we know that algorithms surface content that generates conversation or ongoing engagement. So how do we use those calls to action that encourage not just seeing the ad, but some type of interaction, whether that’s sharing remixing or community participation.

Just as one stat, TikTok says that ads with a hashtag challenge generate up to 17% higher brand recall than standard ads. So really thinking about what are those things in those different channels that will make people act on it even if it’s not a sale, what are the other ways that we can have them act and interact? We also want to balance short term and long-term signals. So performance ads do optimize for conversions, but brand ads they optimize for memory.

And Eva’s going to be talking about that in a little bit too, how that plays off the memory and recall and brand linkage. We also know we want to feed variety, not just repetition. So all of these platforms are going to penalize you if there’s ad fatigue. So one thing that we’re really careful about tracking is when do we hit that level of ad fatigue and making sure that we’re optimizing not just our channels and how we’re buying but also what the creative looks like.

And then finally for number six, we want to build brands, distinctive brand assets that outlast the feed. So again, when it comes down to just core brand strategy, what does your brand stand for? And I think that what this all equals is you can confuse one in six. So you need to both have ads that feel native and not generic to the channel that they’re in, but they still feel like your brands.

So really important to make sure that wherever you show up you’re laddering up to that brand umbrella and that same creative strategy. And transitioning over to Eva, just to talk a little bit about when we think about this fight to get attention, how does that also play out in the research space? Because there’s a fight there too.

The fight for attention in research

Eva Gott (07:26):

Oh my gosh, absolutely. I mean think about all of the requests you get to provide feedback, whether it’s from your car dealership, your doctor’s offices. Every time you buy something on Amazon, you’re getting overwhelmed with requests to provide your feedback. It used to be that when we would do surveys, I’m just competing with other surveys, but now my survey, there’s huge cross-category competition. I’m competing with Amazon, I’m competing with your doctor’s office to get feedback from you.

Not only is it just this overwhelming competitive landscape, but as we were talking earlier, the way that people are dealing with things on TikTok, the fact that you now have three second ads, I used to think 15 seconds was too short. Consumers now have built that into how they want to provide feedback for you as well. So an average consumer survey could be about five minutes.

An average B2B could be about 10 minutes. Think about that real estate, that’s 25 questions maybe if you’re lucky. So you really have to be smart with what you put in those 25 questions. Really focus on a specific objective. Think about how you would answer that question. How would really build thoughtfully that survey so that you’re getting back really valuable? I mean the good news is that we do have new models out there that are blending different tools and channels. For instance, I use a platform called Meaningful that allows me to pull in secondary research, primary research, social listening, even your own the internal CRM data and build out a great dashboard.

So not only does that help us deal with siloed data that a lot of brands are dealing with, but it also helps you be more efficient. So you’re going out to consumers where they want to give you honest feedback and then you’re using your primary research then to help fill in the gaps for the things you don’t know.

Dawn Tucker (09:38):

And I think that’s really hard and a really important thing, a five to seven minute survey for consumers is probably less than 20 questions if they’re not complicated questions. So I find that’s always hardest when I’m working with clients on kind of structuring and what a research study is just to determine we can add something, but you got to take something away and to really think about if you have the answer to that question, how will it be actionable to make sure that it is a data point that you will actually use And it’s hard to get it down

Eva Gott (10:13):

And Dawn, it’s even harder too because budgets are shorter and you’re like you want to do as much as you can if you’re going out to do research. So it really is, it’s a huge trade off, huge trade off.

Impressions are worthless without intention

Dawn Tucker (10:26):

Okay, next impressions are worthless without intention. So when we think about impressions, it’s not just about setting goals to get the most impressions out there, but there is a huge quality component which I think is becoming more and more important and that really begins with what you’re serving, the correct creative, what is the creative. So if we look at this stat, if everyone walks away not remembering anything else from this webinar, I hope you’ll remember this, Nielsen found that 47% of sales lift from advertising can be attributed to the creative.

That means that Alyssa’s team could be doing absolutely everything, they have the best plan, they’ve even identified the best audience, and if the creative is not hitting, you’re not going to see those results. So we really need to start at the beginning, if you will, and what is that creative that’s really going to connect so that we start to see those results.

Again, just not to be on my brand advertising soapbox, but we really do see with a lot of campaigns also that you really do need to build that brand. If we move straight to performance lower funnel and your brand doesn’t have the awareness that you need, we don’t see the same results. So we need to really start at the top, build that strong, not just that it’s an awareness, but there’s a familiarity that puts you within that consideration set and also makes you more memorable.

So our process is pretty simple on paper. We weed out what is it about your brand that’s the best value propositions and where does that meet what the audience is looking for and really looking for that emotional connection, having a solid creative point of view that does make it distinctive. It’s super important again to make all of those impressions that you are putting out there.

The Role of Creative in Sales Lift

Eva Gott (12:42):

Dawn, I also wanted to add too that not only does the brand help differentiate, but oftentimes too it gives people the reason why you are more valuable. So it can actually, why would I choose a brand over a generic? It gives you that value proposition of why that brand is worth more

Dawn Tucker (13:00):

And thank you for saying that, right? So if I’m looking at advertising and I can cover up the logo and put any other logo on it, you’re probably not there yet. What is that distinctive thing that sets it apart, which is really hard to do, especially in there are certain categories where it feels like they’re very similar things and you need to do the work to kind of set up what does our brand stand for?

What are the brand pillars, not just from a brand perspective but operationally. How are we actually executing upon that in a way that is believable because we don’t want to just say it, we want to be doing it. And then getting to, alright, now let’s say you got the great creative, you got the creative ready to go. How do you ensure that you have those quality impressions, Alyssa?

Ensuring quality impressions

Alyssa Windle (13:55):

Yeah, so like you said, we’re learning that it’s not just about the quantity, it’s about the quality and really the quality of the exposures just as if not more important than the quantity of exposures. So from a planning perspective, we really have to balance the volume with the value. We want to prioritize impressions that do earn that attention and ultimately have a greater impact.

We know that high attention placements like CTV or a high impact display, the more dynamic creative ones that have strong CTAs, anything that makes that creative stronger in a placement that has that dynamic nature is going to drive higher conversion lift 130% higher, it’s going to have lower cost per acquisition, nearly cuts it in half and then it also has stronger brand recall which ultimately is going to drive so much of that. So really important to have high attention placements like Don said, like we’re saying, it’s not just that all impressions are equal. Attention really is about that exposure, driving impact and making sure that it is garnering that attention.

Measuring attention and brand linkage

Dawn Tucker (15:02):

So how do we know, know if this attention that we’re garnering, if the creative is distinctive, if the impressions were quality enough to stand out, how do we measure that

Alyssa Windle (15:16):

From a media perspective? We want to look at things like dwell time. We want to look at engagement, we want to understand what that brand lift is. Having those studies in place, looking at those engagement metrics are going to be important just for that measurement and that understanding at a very impactful level.

Dawn Tucker (15:37):

And from getting inside the heads of our consumer’s perspective.

Eva Gott (15:42):

This is unfortunately not the best news because what we’re really thinking here is we’ve got, I don’t want to mention too much brain fog, but there’s a little brain fog kind of that post COVID thinking. We’re definitely having those attention shifts that’s happening because of our media channels. There’s some societal shifts happening as well. Bringing all this together, whether all coalesces, there’s, there’s some unfortunate negative impacts on what’s going on with our brains right now. I’m referencing some research from client and partners that does some healthcare studies that talks about where our brains are in this day and age.

And we’ve talked a lot about attention span, so I’m not going to talk too much there, but memory and patience are decreasing. About a third of the consumers are saying, you know what? I’m having trouble remembering simple things in my day-to-day life and I’m also losing my patience more so I’m not remembering.

I don’t have a lot of attention and my patience is low. That’s a bad mix. And then now let’s think about what this does for your advertising, the brand linkage in the lower right corner, four in 10 say, if I may even remember your ad, but I don’t remember who it was for. That’s scary. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort to put together this great campaign and people are struggling to remember it. That’s concerning. That’s concerning. And if Dawn you go to the next slide, I can talk a little bit about kind of now what’s that impact on some of your scores. So if you don’t make simple, memorable brand is the star advertising and what we said that’s really hard. If you’ve only got three seconds of real estate for your ad, what is that actually doing now to your brand linkage?

It’s really hard to get it. Let’s pretend in this example about two thirds recall your ad. That’s great, right? I remember your ad now you say, well who was it for? And if only 20% recall that that’s the actual brand, the sponsor, the linkage back is 29%. So again, if we don’t find ways to really not just make it simple and memorable but really make it relevant, it goes out of their brain. We have very little space left up there to recall anything and the brand name will go first unless you make it connect it and make it relevant to them.

Personalization vs. relevance

Dawn Tucker (18:18):

And I think that there’s a trend in one. There are two things I think that are at play in addition to maybe our brains deteriorating on its own, but we have this one as we talked about, there’s so much out there that’s dividing our attention, but I’m also seeing that there’s a lot of brands that say like, oh, I want to be on TikTok and go for things like shock value to grab attention and it really has no connection whatsoever to your brand. And people are saying, how do I get attention but missing that second part. So it’s great to get attention, but these numbers could not be any more damning. You got to get the attention and you also have to make that connection and it’s got to tie back to your brand and it has to be different from what your nearest competitors are saying.

So next we’re going to touch on a little bit of personalization. So personalization is dead, relevance is what matters. I think that we went through a period where it was like how much can we personalize? Let’s personalize as much as we possibly can. And especially here at Amsive, we have a lot of data and we do a lot of work in building these audience profiles and really understand and know everything about the people that we’re looking to target. But you really need to walk that fine line between what we’re kind of saying is creepy and relevant.

So just to again, a little bit as an example, it could feel invasive. If I get a message that says, Hey Dawn, we saw you looked at red shoes three times last night. Like, okay, someone’s watching me. It is over targeting and also not really necessary. So taking some sensitive information, I don’t like to know when people were watching me and they know what I was doing at what time. It just is going a little bit too far. Ads that follow you everywhere, right?

It is going to take the focus away from your brand and more people are going to be thinking about how it’s working and how they know because it feels like surveillance, it’s not service, it’s not hopeful at that point. So some of the things we kind of try to look at is when we’re developing personas and really developing those personas based on what different categories of relevance are so that we make sure that we’re hitting what the key points are in terms of what’s going to motivate them without getting, as we said, too personal. So it should feel helpful. So maybe instead of saying that they know I shop for red shoes three times last night, we say still shopping for running shoes, here’s our most popular style for fall. Get them back into the loop, get them to look at something.

Again, doesn’t even have to be the exact same thing, but just that nudge, that little reminder that they didn’t complete what they started using those contextual and behavioral cues, not using personal data. We don’t want to go out there and say, because you have a credit score of 648, this is what we’re giving you today. We want to let them know we’re giving them a pre-approved offer. We don’t have to be that specific about it, we just need to be specific enough to be relevant to them so that they do take that next step and feel like this is for them without being too much for them.

So again, we’re really looking to match that need and moment, not the identity. And then in terms of media planning perspective, Alyssa, what is this formula?

Alyssa Windle (22:08):

Yeah, from our perspective, it’s really about making sure that we are doing the research, we are getting the insights, and we’re able to turn that into targeting that does feel helpful and not creepy like you were saying. So the more we understand our consumer, the more we understand their behaviors and their interests and their passions and can tailor the placements, the channels, the creative to them, it feels like we are connecting with them rather than just watching them.

So this allows us to really understand our consumer and then connect with them in those right moments. And so ultimately when the message and the mindset and then timing are all aligned because of that research, because of what we know and because of what we can put into place as a result, that’s when personalization feels more meaningful rather than feeling invasive and overdone.

The illusion of brand loyalty

Dawn Tucker (22:59):

Great. Next we want to talk a little bit about loyalty and specifically loyalty as a bit of an illusion in the book How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp, which is really very research based. If anyone on the call has not read how brands grow, I really do encourage you to pick it up because what they did is they took years and years of research and data to kind of substantiate some things that we should be kind of like myth busters. And one of them is that there’s anything you can do about loyalty.

And the truth is that people aren’t loyal. Like we said, they’re busy and also their attention is very scattered. They buy what’s easy to remember. So really it’s that idea that you have to have that mental availability, which for one means always being out there and your buyers are just as likely to be light shoppers of the other brands that you’re competing with today. So Alyssa, what does that mean from your perspective and how do you kind of play into that, that we can’t just assume that buyers are going to come back again?

Staying consistent to retain customers

Alyssa Windle (24:20):

Yeah, I think we’re learning more and more that loyalty doesn’t last forever and we need to be consistent and relevant to keep earning that attention. It used to be that you had a loyal consumer and you could kind of rush in your loyals on that, but not anymore. You need to stay consistent, stay in market. And so we have a few key pillars here that we like to plan around and think about as we’re thinking about not only getting in front of new, but making sure that we’re keeping our loyal customers as well.

So always be in market, prioritizing cross channel consistency. Both of these are key, right? That visibility is going to build trust and the consistency is going to reinforce it. No one’s going to purchase a brand that they haven’t seen. And even your loyal customers, they are being inundated with other information and new brands and they may be willing to switch if they’re not seeing you consistently.

So really reinforcing that messaging, making sure that you have that visibility is critical. It’s also important to balance retention and reacquisition efforts as well as invest in your brand equity. So those upper funnel efforts, they’re going to fuel longevity and ultimately performance. You can’t be focused on one versus the other. If you’re focused too much on performance, you will lose out on that longevity and keeping your loyal customers that upper funnel and those awareness efforts are going to be what keep them in the fold and keep them aware and keeping you consistently amongst the competitor set.

Dawn Tucker (25:42):

So Alyssa, that basically means that in a sense you have to treat your customers the same way that you would be treating prospects.

Alyssa Windle (25:49):

Yeah, exactly. It’s much more balanced approach. You’re looking at them very similarly and that awareness is critical with your loyal consumers just as much as your new consumers as well.

Dawn Tucker (26:00):

I mean if that wasn’t the case, right, McDonald’s would never need to advertise, but they advertise to stay top of mind and it does make a difference. Of course, everyone knows who McDonald’s is, they have that brand awareness, but if it’s not top of mind and we’re not constantly staying on, there’s going to be other brands that are going to get into their brain and they’re going to make different choices.

Alyssa Windle (26:21):

Exactly. Another point we’ve touched on, relevance is more important than frequency. So it’s not just about showing up or showing up more often. It’s really about saying the right things that connect and have that impact and drive those actions we’re looking for. So really important to balance both, but make sure that critical piece of that relevant and resonating creative is there. And then last but not least, obviously testing, learning, optimizing continuously agility is critical. We know that and it’ll lead to that long-term success. But if you’re not able to continually test and obviously optimize, you’re going to fall behind. There’s so many new opportunities out there to get in front of your audiences and it’s really important that you’re willing to be agile and make those opportunities impactful for you as well.

Dawn Tucker (27:11):

And then getting a little bit more into how you message and what the creative, again, relevance beats frequency. So we’ve already spoken about that. How can you be relevant to audiences the right message at the right time? It matters more than the pure frequency of messaging. Invest in brand equity, not just performance. So again, as we kind of just talked about as well, you got to keep your brand top of mind, which does mean that full funnel mix and not just always just chasing performance at the bottom level and also prioritizing that cross channel consistency.

So how do we really tell that journey across every touchpoint in reinforcing trust along the way? And that is a lot of what we spend a lot of our time here at Amsive talking about and really audience science and how we do follow those customers, again from offline to online to really build the storytelling element of it and really take them through a very controlled journey, understanding exactly who that audience is and understanding what the relevance is for them that drives that performance. And so speaking of that, we know loyalty is anything but guaranteed. But to do that well, we have to really understand why are consumers shifting, what’s driving their choices and how are those choices evolving? So to unpack that a little bit, I’m going to hand it back over to Eva who’s going to take us into the research space and what it reveals about today’s consumers.

Understanding consumer switching behavior

Eva Gott (29:08):

Yeah, there’s a really great example of some switcher mentality recently actually occurred in the healthcare industry. And when we think about things a few years ago, people would have their primary doctor, they’d have their primary system that they engaged with and they were very happy doing a one-stop shop. I go and do everything with that one healthcare system. COVID changed some behaviors. We had to, we had to engage with telehealth, we had to go to CVS to get our vaccines.

We had to explore new urgent care for some primary care new places to go get lab work. And what happened is we kind of like it now. I like having those choices and those new choices have opened up that healthcare experience where I don’t have to stay with the same thing for the same system or the same doctor. Through all of those experiences, I can kind of choose my own adventure.

So thinking through now some of the metrics where if I’m used to now having access and convenience, I may switch my healthcare provider and four in 10 consumers have done that recently. Digital tools, scheduling options. I’m not sure how many of you have been recently on your MyChart or your EMR, but scheduling an online appointment is a huge pain point. If you as a system learn how to actually navigate that, you can stop a lot of switching behavior. I mean one in three would switch for better digital experiences. And like I just said, I want to mix.

I want to pick what I want to do and nearly 70% of consumers say, I don’t see healthcare as a single system-based experience anymore. I’m choosing my own adventure. So all of that to say how can we maybe use research as a way to understand some of those triggers or maybe make ourselves smarter about how we can work towards building a stronger brand to deal with the splintering loyalty that’s happening.

So one thing we can do, assess loyalty continuously. I’m not saying that you have to have always on surveys, but you can do pulse surveys through the year, really understand awareness, familiarity, be on top of things, understand where your consumers are, do some secondary research, do some social listening, social scraping, understand the category disruptors, emerging competitors, maybe some shifts in how your consumers want to engage with you.

Map your modern decision journey. I actually was talking to a colleague of mine who works in the financial sector and he mentioned to me that their departments are so siloed that they really don’t know how people move from familiarity to consideration. This is a financial, there’s a big gap there. You really need to maybe do a little new customer journey. Things are changing. People want to use digital tools. You have to look at that, but you should never have that question of how do my own customers move from familiarity to consideration.

That’s a huge, huge gap. Listening for emotional shifts, not just behavioral ones. This is really important because we sit on a lot of behavioral data. We sit on a lot of demographic data, but that learning a little bit of what’s happening in people’s brains, you can see where they may be ready to shift. What are those triggers that’s ready to happen that tells you this person is ready to shift from Geico to progressive for instance. There are some triggers that are happening and if you stay on top of that, usually a little bit of qualitative helps with that. That’s a really great way to go about it.

A lot of people are sitting on segmentation. Again, building a little bit of attitudinal data makes your segmentation more powerful. So not just demographically or behaviorally, how do people fall out, but what attitudes, motivations are also going on can help you bring really more power to how you segment out your customers.

Dawn Tucker (33:50):

And that’s a really good point because again, we have a lot of data. There’s a lot of data that’s out there, but that data doesn’t really tell you the why behind for your brand specifically or why are they moving that way or even begin to predict what’s coming. And I think you just used two really good examples, healthcare and the financial industry. COVID kind of forced people to leapfrog ahead to things that they didn’t think they were ready or comfortable with and found out that they really loved it.

You needed to be on top of that. I know we did a lot of research for a lot of companies during COVID where we were trying to assess are people going to go back to how they did things before and just try to predict what’s going to happen next. But you really can’t do that without going out and actually talking to your consumers. Yeah,

Eva Gott (34:45):

And on top of that, Dawn, sometimes you get those little nuggets specifically out of qualitative. That actually is what inspires your creative team or your media team to do something special to bring that message back in to the creative or the channel. That’s the other missing piece of the puzzle. We can get information, it can make some operational changes and we can also make some creative changes using some of those same information.

Dawn Tucker (35:16):

I always, if your goal is to become a customer-centric company, you cannot do that without talking to people. You have to get out there and talk to people. The data alone is not going to tell you what you need to know, what they’re looking for. If you truly want to stand for make them your priority, you need to understand what their priorities are and to understand, as you said in this slide, that those priorities shift over time. So you need to be prepared and ready to know what’s going to be next. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about B2B. We very much break out.

We had B2B clients, we had B2C clients. There are obviously distinctions between both of them, but what we know is that everything we’ve talked about today also applies to B2B buyers too. I mean at its core there’s still people like you and I are where consumers in one part of our lives and we’re the B2B people on the other side. So they’re still distracted and overwhelmed and pulled in a dozen directions. And I think that that’s becoming even within the last year a little bit worse. So if you could speak a little bit to what’s going on today, Alyssa?

B2B: the same rules of consumer behavior apply

Alyssa Windle (36:37):

Yeah, yeah. So what we see is that choice overload is just as real and just as prevalent in B2B. Like Dawn mentioned, people are busy, they’re still people, they’re busy, they’re distracted, they’re bombarded with messages just like everyone else. And so there’s a lot of similarities from consumers to be two B decision makers. And so really becomes just as critical to show up in the right places, the places that really matter, where we see that they are learning, where they’re connecting with brands, where they’re evaluating brands. And right now that’s on social. So platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, even TikTok, have become the new professional landscape and ecosystem where we are seeing that discovery and that education and the influencing is happening. And so really important to make sure we have a presence there. Obviously we see here that the spend reflects that B2B social investment is continuously growing with no end in sight.

And right now it’s making up nearly half of all of digital spend in this space. And so that is significant. And as planners, we need to start thinking about our job is to make sure that we’re getting that attention and that we’re getting media in the right places and we’re able to really impact decisions. So we’re focused on social first strategies. We want to make sure that we’re showing up in credible and engaging ways to earn that attention in crowded feeds and able to make that impact that we’re looking for in this space as the same as any other.

Dawn Tucker (38:05):

And to that point, that goes the same for research. And I have found B2B research has always been more difficult than consumer research in many ways, but there’s even more rethinking that needs to be done today.

Eva Gott (38:21):

Yeah, I mean just as you were talking about all the blur between the social channels and using social channels for B2B communications, think about how we used to do where you had B2B sample panels and that was very easy. You reached out to people, you talked to them. Now we’re reaching out to them in those same channels in LinkedIn, imagine how many emails you get a day, how many people reach out to you on LinkedIn. A lot of it’s spam. I’m now trying to push my invitation to those B2B participants in those same channels. It’s very hard to stand out.

You do have to get creative to be able break through the clutter. You have to connect with new partners, you have to come up with some hybrid approaches to be able to get to those B2B participants. Additionally, unfortunately, fraud is real. So it would be wrong of me not to mention and B2B that there is fraud C-level people are not taking surveys for coffee points.

There are some very educated people out there who are reverse engineering your survey to get a very attractive incentive. That is part of B2B research. We get smart, we have some tech safety nets so that we can find them, but they really do end up looking a lot like real respondents. They don’t speed, they don’t straight line. They give you robust open-end answers. So you do have to actually spend a lot of time to make sure that they’re real people. There’s good news though.

You can still get to high quality niche audiences. You just have be smarter, right? Smaller sample sizes, shorter surveys. There’s a lot of really great partners out there who know how to get to doctors who know how to get to it. Decision makers who are using some of those same channels that we just talked about to find lookalike respondents and reach out to people and bring them into your research. So you can still do great B2B research. You just have to be smarter about it and partner wisely. Like I said, there’s some really great people who know how to vet respondents so that you’re getting really, really good actionable B2B insights.

Dawn Tucker (41:01):

So we just want to end on now is the time, as we mentioned in the beginning, to really be thinking about 2026, the perfect time to start getting ready. So what are some of the things that you could be doing? So just to start, number one, reassessing your audience model or building an audience model, really understanding who that audience is, who that customer is, one that’s going to be one of the key components to developing a strategy that will allow you to create that differentiated creative that can stand apart. Also allows you to understand where the relevance is, what are the factors are that you should be really honing in for different personas, but really building that.

Who is your customer today? Is that who you want it to be tomorrow? If it’s not, what are we going to do to help get you there? So that’s at its most core, something that we hope all of you, if you do not have a good understanding or good grasp on who your customer is today, now is a really great time to be doing that work.

Preparing your strategy for 2026

Eva Gott (42:11):

Also a great time to be investing in some emotional understanding. I think we’ve talked a lot about going beyond demos and functional drivers. I mean really getting at those nuggets of emotional insights is so important. I always think of that one example about Pampers. I know this is an old one, but it’s a good one where they did research because they kept on thinking, oh, moms want more absorbent diapers.

And so they kept focusing, focusing there, and then they did research and found out mom don’t want more absorbent diapers. They want their kids out of diapers, right? That’s a huge emotional insight that drives product development, that drives everything. And now we have pull-ups, right? So thinking about that, how can you get to those types of nuggets that really leads your brand to success?

Dawn Tucker (43:06):

And as a brand strategist, there’s nothing I love more than when I see a spot, a new spot, and I can see what the strategy is. And one of my favorite ones to bring out is Poppy. And two years ago when they launched in the Super Bowl, their big ad, it was very clear. Their insight was that people really love to drink soda, but they feel really guilty when they do it. Very simple insight and very simply laid out in what I thought was a very well effective enough spot where they ended up being bought out for almost $2 billion. So I think it worked, but again, they did that. They did that consumer work upfront to understand what was that emotional connection

Alyssa Windle (43:52):

And you remembered the brand two years later. Yeah. Something else we want to focus on is studying attention, not just getting that awareness. So we do want to make sure that we are getting that attention, knowing that it is the most valuable piece. We want to measure dwell time. We want to measure engagement metrics. We want to measure brand lift, really helping us understand what is earning and sustaining that attention so that we can continue to guide the decisions we make based on that understanding and those data points.

Another piece here, connecting brand and performance data connected and related, but really we know that a consistent full funnel media presence will drive the best results both with your current and your future consumers. And so it’s really important to have that media in market, but also to understand how it is working and how those efforts are connected and being able to connect with your audience from the first introduction to the conversion. Very, very valuable. And something that we put at the forefront here with our audience first approach.

Dawn Tucker (44:57):

And something I’ll add to that too is that a lot of times what we see is you might have a pretty strong upper funnel and strong lower funnel, but we’re missing that connective tissue in the middle. That and Eva, you were talking before about how do you get them in that consideration set. So really thinking about that full journey and not just being total brand and get $500 off, what does that story in between that helps you kind of pull it through a little bit and thinking about do you have all those components today? And if you don’t, what work can you do in the next two months to kind of build some of that stuff out?

Alyssa Windle (45:35):

Exactly. And then five here, test, learn, and optimize. We touched on this really staying agile testing, often optimizing, always being able to pivot quickly and being willing to learn and then scrap something that didn’t work really valuable will allow your brand to stay relevant and ahead. So very, very important to be doing all of those things as well.

Eva Gott (46:01):

And Alyssa too, there’s so many new platforms now that it is easy to test your concepts either in real time or in any mocked real time. There’s just a lot of options right now in terms of platforms to help you do that too,

Alyssa Windle (46:19):

Right? Important to take advantage there.

Eva Gott (46:21):

Yeah.

Alyssa Windle (46:22):

Yeah.

Building your research plan

Eva Gott (46:24):

Speaking of building your future facing research plan. So one, I have kind of a two-pronged approach, particularly at this time of year, and one of it just kind of builds off what we were just talking about, Alyssa, which is learn about what’s out. There are a lot of great platforms there right now. There’s a lot of AI driven platforms, there are synthetic respondents, there’s a lot of new things and a lot of new ways to do research. Sit on some demos, learn ’em, see what works, see what works for you. Reach out to people like myself or Dawn and say, Hey, what can I be doing? What can I be using?

You don’t want to overwhelm yourself, but just kind of get up to speed and get educated about all the different ways and platforms that you can use. And then the second part of that pronged approach is do a little housekeeping.

What objectives do you have for your brand in the coming year? What are some gaps in your research knowledge? Think about it now. Plan it out. And like we said before, because attention is so short, do it in little chunks, right? Do smaller surveys in a chunked approach. And if you plan a little bit now and have some of your objectives set up, you can hit with 2026, hit the ground running with your research plans.

Dawn Tucker (47:57):

That’s great. And as Eva said, so here’s a QR code here if you snap that you can arrange to contact any of us. We do encourage. We would love to speak to all of you individually further have a chat about things that we spoke about today, how it relates to your brand. So I just wanted to mention that as we keep this up, but I think we’re going to go take a few questions.

Q&A

Leih Boyden (48:27):

The first question is, what are some of the best ways for healthcare brands to use marketing to keep patients engaged when there is so much competition out there?

Dawn Tucker (48:41):

So specifically in the healthcare space, Alyssa, what are some of the tactics that you use for your healthcare clients to make sure that they’re engaged with a solid media plan?

Alyssa Windle (48:54):

Yeah, I think from a media perspective, we want to make sure that we are connecting with them throughout their journey. We know that it is a journey. We know that education’s really important. We know that getting the information in front of them and connecting them with something that feels consistent and credible and meeting them throughout their journey is just a critical element in the healthcare space for sure.

Dawn Tucker (49:17):

And again, I think where really understanding what differentiates your brand in a way that’s going to motivate those consumers both in a way for standing out. For a lot of people in the healthcare space, there are certain things that a lot of people are talking, a lot of companies are talking about that are very consistent. So there are two things that I always ask.

One, how do you substantiate that? Are you really doing it operationally? Because the people that are looking at your ads, they know the difference. They know if it just feels generic. So when we go back to that, if I put my hand over your logo, could I swap in another brand’s logo in there? If the answer is yes, then you could probably do a little bit more work to tighten up what your brand and creative strategy is to kind of capture and keep that attention in a way that differentiates you from your other competitors in the market. We spend a lot of time of looking at what is the white space in specific markets? Where can we stand out, how can we stand out?

Those are all things that are, I think especially important within that healthcare area. And not to just assume that the patients or the customers, but to really talk to them and understand what truly are their pain points. If you speak to their pain points, they’re going to remember and they’re going to, there’s going to be greater recall and action.

Eva Gott (50:50):

And Dawn, I also wanted to add too, as we talked earlier, there are things shifting. So think about some of the millennial and Gen Z and how they want to access healthcare, how they are using digital tools, AI for some of their healthcare needs, how is that going to impact things in a few years? So doing some competitive landscaping, maybe we always talk about moms being the healthcare gatekeeper of their households.

How is that going to shift? Are you prepared for the things that are coming up? So a little bit of competitive landscaping and maybe even some social scraping and understanding what people are saying about your brand when they don’t think you’re listening. Those things right now would be really, really important as well.

Dawn Tucker (51:42):

And that’s a really good point. And again, even if you might not have budgets for primary research to go out there and talk to people, there’s a lot of different ways, again, whether it’s social listening, again, kind of the same thing, but I spent a lot of time on Reddit, just seeing what people are, what is the conversation, not just about what people are talking about your brand, but what are they talking about in terms of the category? And that’s also a really good way to get some really valuable insights that are relevant and today happening today.

Leih Boyden (52:18):

The next question is what types of research help financial brands and financial institutions understand what really drives that valuable attention and drives action And is not just awareness that goes nowhere,

Dawn Tucker (52:35):

Right? So I’ll let Eva take this in a second, but a lot of that is what are your challenges? What questions are you looking to answer? That’s how we approach it at first. Is it that you have a product that’s not selling well? And you need to better understand is it the product? Is it your brand awareness? Is it that people don’t associate you with that product? That would be a very specific type of study, but that’s a lot of the time. What do you think? What is your hypothesis? What do you think that your challenges are? And then we can build a research plan around that. But Eva can speak more eloquently about this.

Eva Gott (53:15):

No, that’s actually how I always start. What is your objective? Is part of your, I don’t want to say the name. I’ve worked on a particular financial product that skewed older. So is that challenge of my members are aging out and how do I engage with younger members? Am I a new FinTech that is really strong among young people, but struggles to get the more established banking customer? Am I a really well-known brand that is, but is regional and wants to branch out nationally? There’s a lot of different directions. So absolutely start with your objective. But again, just like we saw with healthcare so much is changing in the financials because of all the digital tools. How can we just better understand that landscape and what are some of the trends, I think is another very important layer there.

Dawn Tucker (54:18):

Again, this comes down to what we were saying before too. Don’t just assume you understand what consumers are thinking. And I think for both healthcare and also for financial institutions, really understanding what the psychology is behind switching behavior. Why today are people switching? And again, I would want to understand further from financial institutions it are they all offer driven? Are the people that do move for the $500, are they less likely to have a higher lifetime value because they came in that way and kind of reassessing who you want to bring into the fold?

Who’s going to be your most valuable customers by learning about what people’s past behavior was and what brought them to where they are now? Maybe understanding what the barriers are to switching accounts. What are different things that we can ask and understand about them to either make a better value proposition or understand? Again, that’s where that relevance comes in. What is the relevance to you? Why should you take the trouble to switch over? You need to do that Learning to understand that psychology before you can develop that

Eva Gott (55:31):

And maybe also find not just people who are thinking of switching from your brand, but in that landscape, are there other unhappy customers of another brand that you can easily steal market share from? So that other flip side of thinking about what you bring to the market, and maybe there’s other prospects out there who are prime customers for you as well.

Dawn Tucker (55:59):

And again, I think that comes down to really understanding the drivers. And again, this is something that Eva works with every day, not just like taking, oh, so-and-so said that they switched because of X, Y, Z, versus really do the research to draw those correlations. Like we know in the healthcare space or the Medicare space, we use a research provider called Deaf that does a huge research every study year. And we know that people that are more likely to switch Medicare plans are people that have had to contact customer service and not had first call resolution. So those are the types of insights and nuggets that you want to start to understand, to understand what’s motivating people to act.

Leih Boyden (56:42):

A fast final question is going to be how can brands know or measure which media channels are really earning them the right kind of attention versus just getting a view?

Alyssa Windle (56:55):

Yeah, I mean there’s things that we will look at, right? Like time spent engagement with a particular ad completion rates. Those just media metrics are super helpful in understanding that we also, in addition to some of those attention metrics, we want to have brand lift studies in place that will also prove that value and it allows us to really optimize for the quality, not just the quantity. So those are things that we’ll look at from a media perspective.

Dawn Tucker (57:25):

That was fast. Thank you. So again, thank you so much Eva, Alyssa, everyone that joined us, we really appreciate you tuning in. Please use the QR code. We love chatting about this stuff and would love to set up some smaller group discussions if you do have any more questions. So thank you.

The importance of paid media is ramping up in the digital landscape. Discover actionable insights for AI-powered paid media in our recent webinar with Google, or let’s talk about how Amsive can help you future-proof your marketing strategy.