Why 75% of Digital Ads Miss Their Audience—And How to Fix It

Most advertisers only find out an ad wasn't working after the campaign ends. By then, the money is gone. Amplified wants to change that.

The company, led by researcher Dr Karen Nelson-Field, has launched AttentionAI. It's a tool that predicts how much attention an ad will earn before a single dollar is committed.

From Reporting Tool to Planning Tool

Attention measurement has existed for years, but mostly as a post-campaign check. Advertisers would run a campaign, then get a report telling them how much attention their ads actually earned. Useful data, but too late to act on.

AttentionAI flips that sequence. Instead of measuring what happened, it predicts what's likely to happen. Agencies can test creative assets before committing budgets, compare how the same ad performs across different platforms, and make decisions based on predicted outcomes rather than past results.

The model is built on more than 50 billion human attention data points, accumulated over more than a decade of research by Amplified. It has been trained on data from more than two million people across 21 markets. Each ad submitted to the system is analyzed against a modeled audience of 20,000 viewers. The result is a prediction of second-by-second attention, calibrated to specific formats and platforms.

"For over a decade, we have led the industry in measuring real human attention in live environments. AttentionAI is the next major leap, turning that science into a predictive intelligence layer that can be applied across almost every corner of the media ecosystem," said Dr Karen Nelson-Field, founder of Amplified.

The Problem It's Trying to Solve

The backdrop to this launch is significant. Amplified's own data shows that 75% of digital advertising content does not receive active attention. Advertisers are spending against placements where audiences simply aren't watching.

That waste problem is precisely why pre-spend testing is gaining traction. If a team can identify that a creative asset will underperform in a particular format or platform before the campaign goes live, they can either improve the asset or redirect the budget.

easyJet was among the companies involved in early pilots. Kyle Nimmo, head of media investment at the airline, said the tool changed how the team interpreted performance data.

"What stood out in our work with Amplified was the ability to separate creative strength from media environment. The analysis showed that much of our creative was performing well, but that the format and platform context could dramatically change how much attention it was able to earn. That gives us a more sophisticated view of performance, not just whether an asset is good, but where it has the best chance to build memory, land the brand and drive better outcomes," Nimmo said.

That distinction, between a good ad and the right environment for that ad, is the core insight AttentionAI is designed to surface.

Built to Embed, Not to Sit Separately

A critical part of this launch is the API and MCP integration Amplified is releasing alongside the product. Rather than adding another standalone dashboard to agency workflows, the system is designed to feed attention signals directly into existing planning platforms, media mix models, and reporting tools.

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Connect, the South African media agency within The Up&Up Group, has already integrated AttentionAI via the API and is running 500 creative tests a month through the system.

"The launch of the AttentionAI API is a major step forward because it embeds attention directly into the systems where planning, buying and optimisation already happen. Rather than relying on manual workflows, organisations can now programmatically ingest these predictive signals to automate decision-making at scale," Dr Nelson-Field said.

The API architecture matters for enterprise adoption. Agencies running hundreds of campaigns across multiple clients can't afford to run every creative decision through a separate tool. Building attention signals directly into the systems where planning already happens removes the friction that has historically kept attention data at the margins of the planning process.

What Comes Next

Amplified said the model is continuously validated against fresh human attention data as platform formats and creative styles evolve. That ongoing calibration is central to its methodological claim: unlike AI tools that use eye-tracking proxies or computational models, AttentionAI is grounded in observed human behavior collected over more than a decade.

For advertisers still treating attention as a post-campaign metric, this launch represents a direct argument to move that decision point earlier.