How can retail media networks and advertisers know when an ad has truly resonated with consumers?
Metrics like viewability only tell part of the story – they might show that an ad has loaded, but not that it was noticed by anyone; likewise, while click-through or revenue will show that an interaction has taken place, ads are capable of making an impact even when no action is taken.
To really gauge how its in-app ads were landing with consumers, Trainline partnered with Lumen Research, a specialist in eye-tracking technology, to measure attention: which ads users were looking at, when, and for how long; as well as what they recalled afterwards.
Retail Media Age spoke to Mike Follett, CEO at Lumen Research, and Sam Turner, Client Success & Advertising Operations at Trainline to learn why attention is an effective means of assessing ad impact, how Trainline is creating an ad experience that complements – rather than interrupts – the user journey, and what the findings of the research mean for Trainline’s media proposition.
Advertising in a uniquely valuable environment
As Trainline Media is still a relatively new proposition, Turner explained, “We’re in quite a fortunate position of being able to essentially build many of our advertising products from the ground up.
“What that means is we’re not just creating inventory to sell – we’re able to design native experiences that genuinely deliver value for our advertisers while also feeling natural and useful for our existing customer base.”
Turner put forward that travel is a uniquely valuable environment for advertisers due to the mindset in which consumers engage with travel products. “If you think about travel at its core, booking and managing a journey is a functional task – people are actively planning something that they will live in real life.
“They’re making decisions in a leaned-in way; they’re paying attention to what they’re doing. But it’s also an emotionally significant process – there’s often a genuine excitement around the journey.
“So, we had a hypothesis that the functional layer together with that broader emotional landscape would create a very high-attention environment.”
This thought process led to Trainline approaching Lumen Research in search of hard data to back up their theory – and to conduct an independent test that would shed light on how users of the app responded to advertising.
The importance of attention
When carrying out the research, Lumen asked study participants to book a journey on the Trainline app while using Lumen’s software to track their eye movements via their camera.
Following this, they were asked to complete a short questionnaire that included questions about what they thought of the app experience and how they had used it, accompanied by some subtle questions about the ads they had encountered and what they recalled of them.
“The guilty fact about advertising is that people find it very easy to ignore,” Follett said frankly. “When you work in advertising, you think that everyone is as interested in it as you are – of course we notice our own ads, but other people have less skin in the game.
“So, it’s really important to be able to see the world through your users’ eyes – not just through your own.”
Turner added, “Attention is a really important piece of the puzzle for us in building Trainline Media because it goes beyond technical viewability to a place where we can tell whether people actually engage – and whether the attention that we generate translates into meaningful commercial outcomes for our advertisers.”
“The data that Lumen collected – both the attention data and the recall data – is entirely consistent with all of the tests we’ve ever conducted,” explained Follett, “which means that we could then benchmark Trainline in terms of both attention and the memory encoding from those ads.
“It’s important to understand in this very real world of fragmentary, distracted, transient, attention: ‘How do my ads do, and how does my app do?’ That’s why it’s so key not just to measure attention but to make sure you measure it in a consistent way so as to be directly comparable to everything else that’s out there.”
Reinforcement brings the message home
The findings of Lumen’s study upheld Trainline’s theories about attention: ads on Trainline were 50% more likely to be viewed than standard mobile display ads.
Eighty-eight percent of Trainline ads were actively viewed and were viewed for 30% longer than average, with 1.9x more attentive seconds compared to the mobile display average.
The ads also delivered a 12 percentage-point lift in prompted recall compared with the control group; a 7 percentage-point lift in brand choice; and a 4 percentage-point lift in brand favourability.
One finding that might run counter to what many advertisers expect is that repeated exposure to an ad only improved attention, prompted recall, brand choice, and favourability – instead of leading to fatigue.
“We think of frequency in media buying as a bad thing,” Follett reflected. “There are frequency caps – because buyers are worried about wasting their money on reaching the same person again.
“But actually, I think we should have frequency floors: a minimum number of outings to get your message across.”
Turner pointed out that the way frequency builds on Trainline is also different to other environments. “If you think about a social feed, your frequency builds within a session where you’re scrolling through and seeing ads – you might return to the app multiple times a day and see the same ads.
“Whereas on Trainline, the ads follow the customer journey” with frequency building over visits that might be weeks apart. Some customers might build frequency more quickly if they use the app for a daily commute; but often the build is elongated because of the nature of Trainline’s product.
A new format launching in September, Sponsored Journeys, will enable advertisers to build frequency by sponsoring the entire search and booking flow, including an in-app content hub. “We’re taking some of the learnings from this research and applying those not just to existing formats and how we improve those but also to any kind of new product design,” Turner explained.
“We’re thinking about how we build native experiences that intercept relevant moments across the customer journey – and also intercept moments where attention is naturally high because of what the customer is doing.
“And then what’s most important is the type of brand you surface within those moments and the messaging that’s used – we need it to be really contextual to the mindset and the need state of the user.”
Ads can be a “utility” – if they’re included thoughtfully
Underscoring the importance of advertising feeling native and relevant, Follett said, “With an app like Trainline, it’s really important to respect people’s attention. You don’t want to interrupt people when they’re booking a train journey.
“There’s a time and a place to advertise to people; you don’t want to get in the way of a utility app.”
With that said, he emphasised: “Ads themselves can be a utility. When they’re relevant, useful, and shown at the right time, they’re helping people rather than interrupting them.”
With Sponsored Journeys, for example, Trainline is encouraging brands to give something back to the consumer in the form of discounts, rewards, or a competition entry and to align their campaigns with an occasion or time of year.
“We think it’s highly suitable for seasonal moments and major events – things like sponsoring our student audience and subsidising their rail travel at the start of term time, or sponsoring people heading to Wimbledon or Glastonbury,” Turner said.
“Or it might be Christmas, which is a massive time for advertisers – can we create goodwill and brand affinity through an advertising brand sponsoring a discount on people’s train journeys home for Christmas?
“The idea is that it’s a much richer brand experience that feels contextually relevant but also rewarding and additive to the existing UX – and ultimately it’s allowing advertisers to become part of the customer experience in the app rather than sitting alongside it and trying to grab attention.”
As Trainline builds its media proposition, said Turner, “We have an opportunity to embed best practice in terms of what we’re trying to achieve for advertisers – but also respecting the UX of the app and our customers’ attention, their time, and the functional nature of what they’re trying to achieve when they log on.
“The way we’re doing that is by having guardrails in place and then thinking about how we can solve advertiser challenges and prove commercial outcomes by building native experiences that are ultimately additive rather than disruptive.”
To find out more about Trainline’s work in commerce media, get in touch: trainlinemedia@thetrainline.com.
