Interactive formats and the attention they ask for

This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer account. It
describes how we think about format design rather than a result we have measured.

The situation

A brand wants to reach an audience during live content. The conventional options are a
mid-roll break, which interrupts the thing the audience came for, or a static overlay, which is
ignored.

Both are priced on exposure. Neither asks whether the exposure was welcome.

The design question

If you accept that attention is finite and that spending someone else’s is a cost you are
imposing, the design question changes. It stops being “how do we get more attention” and becomes
“what would make this worth the attention it takes”.

That is a higher bar and a more interesting problem.

How we would approach it

1. Make it optional and obviously so. An interaction a viewer can ignore
   without cost produces a cleaner signal than one they cannot, because everyone who engaged chose
   to.
2. Keep it inside the content’s rhythm. An overlay that sits within the stream
   rather than stopping it does not tax the thing the audience came for.
3. Give the creator control. Creators know their audience’s tolerance better
   than any optimisation system, and they have every incentive to protect it.
4. Measure the choice, not the exposure. Whether someone engaged is a
   meaningful number. Whether an overlay rendered is not.

The honest tension

Optional formats produce lower engagement counts than compulsory ones. A brand comparing raw
numbers against a mid-roll will see a smaller figure and may conclude the format underperformed.

The counter-argument is that the smaller number is real and the larger one is not, and that
the cumulative cost of compulsory formats is paid by the creator in audience goodwill. We think
that argument is right, but it has to be made rather than assumed.