The media measurement company Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS) announced today the beta release of its Quality Attention™ Optimization product, marking a significant advancement in digital advertising technology. According to the announcement made in Singapore on December 18, 2024, the new tool enables advertisers to optimize campaigns toward high-attention scoring impressions.

The technology demonstrates substantial impact on campaign performance, with data showing campaigns achieving up to 130% lift in conversion rates when comparing high attention impressions versus low attention impressions. This measurement capability stems from IAS's unified approach, combining media quality assessment and eye tracking with machine learning.

In a parallel development, IAS has formed a partnership with Lumen Research to introduce Social Attention measurement. Through this collaboration, advertisers gain access to attention metrics across both programmatic and social media campaigns. Lumen Research's technology measures over 300 billion impressions across multiple social platforms, leveraging what they describe as the world's largest opted-in eye-tracking dataset covering more than 30 countries.

Srishti Gupta, Chief Product Officer of IAS, elaborated on the strategic importance of attention metrics: "Marketers want to understand two things about their ad budgets, 'is it working?' and 'what can I do about it?'. Attention is rightly growing as a way to answer those questions, going beyond isolated metrics like viewability, to truly understand how consumers are engaging and interacting with brands' ads."

The development of Quality Attention™ follows a series of strategic expansions throughout 2024. The company initiated the year with the general availability of its Quality Attention™ measurement product in January. By July, IAS had extended the capability to mobile in-app environments. October marked another milestone with the extension of Quality Attention to Publishers, providing them tools to optimize inventory for attention metrics.

The technology addresses several key performance indicators for advertisers. The system enables cost reduction by optimizing away from low-attention inventory sources. It enhances reach through targeting high-quality placements where ads receive greater attention. Additionally, it supports awareness objectives by identifying environments most conducive to capturing consumer attention.

Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen Research, highlighted the significance of this development: "Linking attention to outcomes, then providing tools to allow advertisers to optimize for those outcomes, are major steps on the road to a real 'Attention Economy'."

The partnership between IAS and Lumen Research introduces new capabilities for measuring attention across social media platforms. Lumen's predictive eye-tracking technology continuously updates its models to maintain accuracy in measuring consumer attention patterns. This technology enables advertisers to purchase social media impressions with greater confidence in actual viewership.

Technical implementation of the Quality Attention™ Optimization beta is currently available to advertisers. The Social Attention Measurement feature, developed in partnership with Lumen, will become accessible to IAS customers starting January 2025.

IAS has structured this release as part of its broader strategy to enhance digital advertising effectiveness. The technology builds upon the company's January 2024 introduction of Quality Attention™ measurement, which pioneered the unification of media quality assessment and eye tracking with machine learning capabilities.

The development represents a methodological shift in digital advertising measurement, moving beyond traditional metrics to incorporate sophisticated attention tracking. This approach aims to provide advertisers with more precise data for campaign optimization while maintaining transparency in measurement methodologies.

For publishers, the technology offers new opportunities to maximize inventory value through attention-based metrics. This capability, introduced in October 2024, enables publishers to optimize their advertising spaces based on demonstrated attention patterns rather than conventional placement metrics alone.