Study: Consumer attention rises in Moment of Next

Readers’ cognitive load, or how busy the brain is at a given moment, is lowered by 8 per cent when finishing a content article, making their brain more available to respond to new stimuli, a new study claims.

Taboola together with Nielsen carried out the study using the BrainVu artificial intelligence (AI) platform to test people’s attentiveness and emotional response to two different types of content, written and video, to measure effectiveness.The study examined an article feed to measure the best end-of-article experience and the most effective mobile video ad experience using BrainVu, a cloud-based service that creates an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience to analyse a spectrum of unique eye measurements to identify audience reaction.

Participants were asked to engage with publisher sites with different end of article experiences, including both an infinite feed and no end of article content. Bio-markers were used to measure their reaction and attitude.

For article content, the study found the ‘Moment of next’ when users were most open-minded and have a lower cognitive load is at the end. Moment of Next is defined as that moment when readers are deciding what to do next with their time and attention. 

Readers were 20 per cent more attentive to the infinite feed (content scrolling) compared to articles without advertising at the bottom, indicated by the movement of their eyes shown by the biomarkers. Infinite Feed generated a 17 per cent higher emotional response from the audience compared to both the finite display of articles without advertising at the bottom.

According to the study, uncertainty and curiosity feed into the moments of next and Infinite Feed is effective because it targeting the reader when they’re most receptive to new content. 

When it comes to mobile video ads, the study found participants in the study were 25 per cent more attentive while watching the same videos on the feeds of Taboola and Facebook compared with YouTube’s pre-roll. Participants had a 13-23 per cent higher emotional response when watching the same video ad on Taboola in comparison to Facebook and YouTube, which is accounted for, in part, by timing the ads in the moment of next.

Earlier this month it was announced Taboola and its digital native advertising competitor, Outbrain, would merge to form a bigger player that can take on the giants Google and Facebook in the digital ad space.

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