Mike Follett, managing director at Lumen Research, says that "attention matters because it is hard to remember things that you haven't looked at. Attention is a scarce resource but extremely valuable as it links closely to brand awareness and sales."

Caxton's local newspapers showed average dwell times on a full-page ad at 7.9 seconds, compared to 3.2 seconds for Lumen norms. Caxton magazine results on a DPS ad showed 14.1 seconds, compared to the 8.7 seconds for the Lumen norm.

Additionally, fractional sized ads in Caxton local papers performed well and were viewed by 71% of the audience for 2.1 seconds. Readers spent as long reading the pages of the advertising inserts as the on-page ads, scrutinising the front cover page of an insert for 57.3 seconds and indicating that they preferred more pages offering more deals and more choice.

"Just because we can see something, doesn't mean that we will see it. In a way, we see what we want to see," says Follett. "The real difference is in the surrounding editorial content."

"The more relevant, the greater the multiplier effect on the surrounding advertising," adds Follett. "We also found that there is very little difference between left and right-hand side positioned advertising in terms of dwell time and viewability across Caxton's media."

Lumen's attention funnel model filters the percentage of ads that were viewable, then the percentage viewed and then the average dwell time in seconds. According to Lumen, the result is an attention seconds/000 impressions currency metric, which can be used across the different media platforms to evaluate and compare effectiveness. Advertisers can combine this with price info to create an 'attentive cost per thousand or CPM'.

"Caxton's local newspapers and magazines generate TV levels of attention," he says, "compared to a 30 second TV ad, which, according to Lumen data from the United States, generated an average 8 039 attention per viewable impressions. A full page in Caxton's local newspapers generated 7 780 and Caxton magazines generating 5 419, significantly above the international norms."

Debbie McIntyre, SPARK Media's marketing services and research director, concludes, "We are delighted that the massive reach numbers held by our local papers at 66% of urban South Africa in our recent Roots research is being further affirmed and better understood — in terms of the usefulness of both the editorial and advertising in our readers lives."

Individuals are encouraged to contact SPARK Media for the full results. Highlights to the presentation can be found here.

For more information, visit www.sparkmedia.co.za. You can also follow SPARK Media on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.