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By zeroing in on attention-focused strategies, Hearts & Science, in collaboration with Amplified, enabled Allwyn to achieve greater media efficiency and set the stage for brand growth in a competitive market. This partnership showcases how innovative, data-driven approaches can refresh established brands and can achieve remarkable business outcomes.
Introduction
In today's fast-paced media world, grabbing consumer attention is key for brands looking to boost engagement and growth. Understanding this, Allwyn’s appointed media agency, Hearts & Science, rolled out a strategy centered on doing just that - capturing attention – for The National Lottery. Their goal was to not only make media spending more efficient but also to generate meaningful and tangible outcomes.
The challenge
Since its inception in 1994, The National Lottery has faced growing competition, with rivals pouring over £97 million into the market in 2023 alone. By late 2023, competitor ad awareness levels sat between 30-38%, and overall media spending continued to rise. It became clear that simply increasing the budget wouldn't be enough. To attract new players effectively, Allwyn needed to make their media strategy more efficient through smart channel planning, focusing on capturing attention.
The approach
To weave attention into their planning, Hearts & Science teamed up with Amplified to utilise their research capabilities across social media and YouTube. This partnership allowed Allwyn to pinpoint the level of attention needed, and measure how much attention their ads were actually getting. By factoring media cost into these insights, Hearts & Science spotted which placements grabbed attention more cost-effectively, shedding light on top-performing positions areas and spots that could use improvement.
The insights
Amplified's research offered highly granular insights, letting Hearts & Science examine Allwyn’s media and creative performance second by second across social media and YouTube. This helped them benchmark against The National Lottery games, competitors and industry standards. A major plus was tracking how attention performed over time for each media placement, enabling tailored media planning strategies for campaigns needing either short or long attention spans.
The impact
Focusing on attention measurement led to standout results:
- Boosted Creative Performance: The top-performing YouTube ad grabbed an extra 3 seconds of active attention compared to industry averages
- Optimised Ad Formats: Matching ad formats to attention needs, using skippable ads to capture attention at scale and non-skippable formats for longer messages and educating the audience
- Improved Brand Metrics: Incorporating attention into their media strategies and planning throughout 2024 contributed to a 10.3% boost in ad recall for Lotto and a 20.6% increase for Set For Life year-on-year, while competitors saw an average drop of 6.3% in recall.
This people-focused analysis enabled Hearts & Science to identify media placements that captured attention more cost-effectively. They not only highlighted top-performing environments but also pinpointed creative elements that boosted attention, like using custom music, countdowns, and first-person GoPro footage, which significantly increased active attention, varying by game.
Additional findings highlighted the effectiveness of First Position formats on social media and stressed the importance of featuring the brand prominently at the start of the content. Moreover, the need for customised formats across various platforms, was recognised to enhance creative effectiveness.
Enhancing media planning with attention metrics
“Our collaboration with Amplified to develop a customised attention solution for Allwyn has enhanced our existing media planning approach. This project has allowed us to pinpoint Allwyn's specific attention needs and establish a comprehensive database of tailored attention data, thereby enriching our media strategies. The results demonstrate the numerous efficiencies and positive outcomes that focusing on attention metrics can deliver.”
- George Viner-Price, Senior Connections Planning Director, Hearts and Science
Not all impressions are equal, and reach doesn’t guarantee engagement. Amplified’s Campaign Strategy tools use real human attention metrics to help you predict and optimise media performance before launch.
Your campaign's already live, great. But even the best executions can benefit from a fresh lens. Amplified’s in-flight attention measurement gives you clear, science-backed insights into how your creative and placements are performing while there's still time to level-up results.
Through bespoke research studies, we help brands, agencies and platforms measure attention where it matters most, across TV, social, CTV, DOOH and more. This in-depth research helps you ensure that your media investments are seen, engaged with, and delivering true impact.
Test, refine and optimise with attention-first insights. From creative testing to bespoke data analysis, we help brands, agencies and platforms improve performance.
Amplified offers flexible, API-driven integrations, making it easy to activate real human attention data within your existing platforms and tools. Whether you’re an agency, publisher, platform or brand, our integrations ensure attention insights are directly embedded into your workflow, powering smarter, more effective decision-making.
If you’re looking to take attention beyond a one-off study or standard integration, a partnership with Amplified unlocks exclusive access to research, insights, technology and strategic collaboration that transforms how you measure, plan and execute media.
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