Advertising Week 2025 Confirmed Attention Is the Next Currency

At Advertising Week 2025, clicks and impressions were background noise. The real conversation was attention: how to measure it, buy it, and prove it. Attention is no longer a side metric. It’s the new currency of marketing for the moment when someone chooses to lean in.

From Noise to Noticed

The challenge is urgent but straightforward. In an era of fragmented screens and infinite content, attention has become the ultimate scarcity. Every brand is fighting not for visibility but for voluntary focus.

At From Noise to Noticed: Attention in the Age of Doom Scrolling, the panelists from Duolingo, Adobe, Marriott, and Intrepid Travel agreed that attention is not bought; it is built. What separates brands that break through from those that fade out is the ability to connect context to mindset.

Adobe’s Mark Manning called it “meeting people in their mindset.” “Students are one of the most skeptical audiences on the internet,” he said. “We have learned to meet them where they are, when they are in a student mindset. When we connect in that context, the value exchange is stronger.”

Marriott International’s Chris Norton added a human lens. “We are a hospitality company first. The hotel room is personal, so relevance and restraint matter,” he said. “Ads should treat people like guests. They work when they are part of the travel experience, not when they interrupt it.” He pointed to partnerships with Visa and Gatorade that married context and intent. “With Gatorade, we focused on hydration while traveling. That simple connection led to a measurable sales lift in our hotels.”

For Intrepid Travel’s Tara McCallum, the journey was one from noise to nuance. “When we entered the North American market, we were using a megaphone, the same creative on every channel. It was expensive and forgettable. Now, we design partnerships that make people care.”

Her brand’s collaboration with Duolingo proved that lesson in real time. “We ran four creatives, but the one that worked best was the simplest: the Duolingo character speaking directly to the user. It barely mentioned us, but it felt authentic. And it worked.”

Moderator Andrew Guendjoian from Duolingo summed it up best: “Attention in this ecosystem is not just scarce. It is skeptical. You cannot demand it. You have to deserve it.”

The takeaway: attention follows mindset, not placement. It happens where emotion, environment, and intent meet. When brands create that fit, audiences choose to listen.

Where Attention Fuels Growth

If From Noise to Noticed: Attention in the Age of Doom Scrolling explored how attention is earned, NextGen Video: Where Attention Fuels Growth showed why it matters. Moderated by Mike Law, the session brought together Alejandra Galvez, Head of Media at IKEA US, Shawn Johnson East, Olympic champion and media entrepreneur, and Andrew East, former NFL player and creator. Together, they examined how attention has become the most meaningful measure of performance in modern video.

Galvez explained how IKEA is rethinking its entire approach to media buying. “We are moving from visibility to vitality,” she said. “A million passive views do not equal a thousand moments of active engagement. Attention is our signal for quality, how long people stay, how much they remember, and how strongly they feel.”

Law noted that this shift is reshaping how brands value creative itself. “Attention connects creative to outcomes,” he said. “It’s the metric that finally bridges storytelling and ROI.”

The Easts described attention from a creator’s perspective, arguing that authenticity has become the new algorithm. “People can tell when something is genuine,” said Shawn Johnson East. “They pay attention when they feel connection, not when they are being sold to.” Andrew East added, “We focus on building trust first. Attention comes after that. It’s earned one story at a time.”

Law closed the discussion by observing, “Attention is becoming the common language between brand and performance marketing. Clients are no longer asking how many people saw the ad, but how many stayed, remembered, and acted.”

The session made clear that attention now connects storytelling and performance. Duration, dwell time, and interaction are now the real indicators of effectiveness.

For travel and retail brands alike, where every impression can translate into a booking or a sale, attention has become the most predictive measure of performance.

That evolution mirrors what Infillion has been advocating for years. Attention is not a vanity metric; it is the value chain that connects experience to outcome.

The Infillion Point of View: Innovating the Attention Economy

While others are just beginning to quantify attention, Infillion has spent more than a decade engineering it. Through TrueX, we pioneered earned, opt-in attention: a model that allows consumers to choose their ad experience via the original value exchange product, guaranteed to drive results. The result is a better experience for the viewer, reduced ad load for publishers, and 5x the brand impact for advertisers over standard video spots.

That simple idea reshaped the industry. TrueX showed early on that voluntary attention drives stronger results. Our research, Eyes Wide Shut: Traversing the Attention Spectrum, defines experiential attention as the highest form of engagement—active, intentional, and outcome-driven. Forced exposure may deliver impressions, but earned attention drives impact.

For Porsche, an interactive configurator yielded a 6.7 percent click-through rate and double-digit gains in consideration. For VisitBritain, a voice-activated AI campaign achieved 7% lift in awareness and consideration, plus a slew of awards. Cait Berry, Marketing Director of Visit Britain, referenced our work at Cracking the Attention Code: From Noise to Noticed panel, saying, “It was a very successful and award winning campaign.” But beyond the accolades, Visit Britain changed the way they measure success. Berry continued, “We don’t care about performance metrics, we want attention metrics.”

These are not outliers; they are evidence that attention thrives when audiences are invited to participate in the experience. As Infillion’s SVP, Research & Analytics, Jamie Auslander put it, “Attention is not a measure of exposure. It is a measure of experience. The brands that win are those that make that experience worth someone’s time.”

The Attention Economy Ahead

Advertising Week 2025 did not just validate attention as the industry’s next performance currency. It signaled a shift in how marketing defines success. The winners of this new economy will be those who understand that attention is not an entitlement. It is earned through relevance, sustained through respect, and proven through outcomes.

That is the standard Infillion built TrueX on, and the principle driving our continued innovation. As the original attention experts, we believe the future belongs to brands that make every impression intentional and every engagement earned.

To see how earned attention translates into measurable results, explore TrueX or download the Eyes Wide Shut: Traversing the Attention Spectrum report.

Attention is the new currency. The brands that respect it will own the future.