Heineken serves up outcomes with mixed attention and brand awareness approach

“It’s important for us to be able to tell a story to our brand team and unlock more budget,” said Sabrina Court, digital media specialist at The Heineken Group.

Heineken’s marketing spend is sizable: marketing and sales investments account for 10.1% of its €14.84 billion ($16.61 billion) net revenue, according to its half-year results. As in the U.S., European advertisers are increasing their spending on social video, retail media and paid search, while growth in non-walled garden inventory is slowing. The IAB estimated European spending on social video rose 25.7% in 2025.

That means when brands do spend on digital display options, it helps to have as much proof as possible that they can provide a return.

The Birra Moretti test revealed an 8% increase in unaided awareness, and a 4% increase in familiarity with the Italian brand, among respondents that spent more than 2.2 seconds looking at their ads, which ran in mobile and desktop “skin” units against martial arts, boxing, tennis and gaming content. Desktop skin units typically held users’ attention for 4.5 seconds, triple the IAB baseline.

GumGum first matched uplifts in brand awareness from data provided by brand lift study firm On Device, with a corresponding attention time across a test panel of thousands of consumers, giving it a “baseline” attention score. Because different drinks in the Heineken portfolio have different brands and brand values, each marque required a custom analysis to get the ball rolling.

“We’re looking to identify an optimum threshold for that specific brand versus their performance outcomes for things like brand awareness, familiarity and recall,” said Matt Goodwin, GumGum’s group digital director.

“It helps advertisers see exactly how much attention their ads generate, and where that attention leads to stronger brand results,” he added. Goodwin said GumGum was also working with Cint and Disqo on brand lift studies for other clients.

Once it’s established, Heineken’s in-house media team can use that baseline to guide media decisions, knowing that if they can achieve at least the established benchmark, their paid activity should contribute to higher brand awareness.

“Our main goal was just to make sure that we’re optimizing towards attention,” Court said. “It just allows us to move closer to understanding quality of exposure rather than simply volume of exposure.”

While her team is currently using it as a post-campaign reporting tool, attentive lift could be used to inform mid-flight media investment changes, Goodwin noted.

Some practitioners warn that relying solely on attention metrics, especially those based on eye-tracking panels, can risk leading marketers astray.

Marc Guldimann, founder of attention measurement firm Adelaide, told Digiday CMOs should ensure they’re using several sources of truth to inform media planning decisions.

“When you optimize media to the longest duration of attention on an impression, you end up creating bad creative incentives,” said Guldimann. The most attention-grabbing creative (or media placement) might not actually be the best vehicle for a brand message, he argued.

GumGum and Heineken’s methodology reduces that risk somewhat, by mixing brand lift and attention data to leaven together.

The company is now adopting the “Attentive Lift” technique across its display activity in the U.K., including campaigns supporting its Old Mout cider brand.

Heineken has deployed contextual solutions and attention measurement in the past for its display activity, and it’s doing so with the Birra Moretti and Old Mout campaigns running right now, too. 

Placements that provide high attention ratings correlate with both brand awareness and conversion improvements. According to Adelaide figures, high attention online video (OLV) placements outperforming low-attention spots for conversions by 62% for one higher education client.

Such combinations of attention and brand awareness metrics are increasingly being employed by marketers in other categories, as they seek to make the case for display spending on the open web bulletproof.

Speaking at Advertising Week New York earlier this week, Tom Murray, CMO of Mattress Firm, said the Tempur-Sealy owner had reconfigured its advertising efforts around attention, message recall and awareness together, using creative effectiveness data derived from TV measurement firm iSpot.

Its recent creative campaigns are direct appeals to sleepers dogged by snoring partners — ideal mattress shoppers, according to the firm’s research — and were designed to hit all three of those goals simultaneously.

“This campaign is never going to win a creative award,” he joked. But the campaign scored high for likeability, information recall and attention, he added. “We earned our attention score as opposed to taking a shortcut.”