18 Mar Article in absatzwirtschaft: Declining Attention – eye square Media Attention Study Germany
Why Attention Is Becoming a Currency
In a fragmented media landscape, traditional KPIs such as pure reach fall short when commercials, ads, and social media posts are swiped away in a matter of seconds.
Today, advertising impact is determined in tiny windows of time: Benchmarks show that just a few seconds of visual attention determine whether a brand is remembered or gets lost in the content overload.
Relevance for Media and Brand Managers
For marketing decision-makers in the DACH region, this means that if you don’t consistently align your TV, digital, and social media campaigns with genuine, measurable attention, you’ll squander your impact—despite significant media investments.
Especially in the German-speaking market, where budgets are scrutinized more closely, data-driven attention research provides the foundation for optimizing placements, formats, and creative assets to maximize attention-grabbing interactions.
Sinking attention is not just a buzzword, but a very real risk to media budgets—and this is precisely where eye square’s research comes in
In our latest article on absatzwirtschaft.de, Matthias Rothensee analyzes the latest findings on declining attention spans (the average is now 2.3 seconds) and shows how brands can ensure their advertising success despite shorter viewing times. Anyone looking to understand the role that the “magic seconds” of media attention play in brand recall, efficiency, and creative excellence will find concrete insights and starting points for their own media planning there.
eye square is a pioneer in attention research and maintains one of the world’s largest benchmark databases on media and brand experience, containing thousands of tested advertising materials. Together with OMD Germany, we used this database as the foundation for a recent Attention Media Study.
Using an InContext approach—combining eye tracking, implicit measurements, and traditional surveys—we can analyze real user experiences across all relevant touchpoints, from TV to online video to social media.
Matthias Rothensee from Brand and Media Research answers the question of how attention is measured and interpreted, and how—despite shrinking attention spans—this knowledge from our joint short study with OMD Germany as part of the Attention Works Initiative can be translated into effective media and creative strategies. Learn more at absatzwirtschaft.de!
About Matthias Rothensee
Matthias Rothensee
Chief Scientific Officer & Partner
Dr. Matthias Rothensee is responsible for methodology and innovation development at eye square.
His research focuses on the impact of advertising, emotions, and visual perception. He is an expert in media research and multivariate statistics and develops eye square’s Media Benchmarks. He also works on AI and leads the development of automated testing platforms (SPARK) and dashboards.
He conceived the award-winning Screenforce study “Mapping the Impact” (Real Impact Award 2023), studied “Multiscreening Behavior Worldwide” for Meta (2018), and quantified the “Performance of Mobile Search” for Google (2017). Rothensee optimizes communication for clients such as Deutsche Telekom, Stepstone, and MediaMarktSaturn.
He speaks at conferences (e.g., dmexco, Horizont, IIeX) and publishes in academic journals (e.g., Journal of Consumer Marketing, European Business Review, and Social Science Computer Review). In addition to his work at eye square, he teaches advertising psychology and research methods.