81% of Indian marketers still plan for reach, not attention
A new report finds Indian media planning still prioritises reach over attention: 81% rank reach in their top three metrics, only 17% rank attention quality.
Indian media planners are still betting on reach first and asking questions later. A new Beyond Reach report from Publicis Media India and MMA India finds that 81% of Indian marketers place reach or incremental reach among their top three media-allocation metrics. Attention quality barely registers: only 17% include it in the same list.
The gap between intent and action
Most marketers are not ignoring attention deliberately. The report shows that 69% do not currently include attention in their media plans, or do not use it to influence media decisions. Yet 86% say they would be likely or very likely to reallocate budgets if reliable attention data showed that another allocation could generate stronger brand memory.
The gap, in other words, is not ambition. It is evidence.
Same impressions, very different attention
Lumen, the attention measurement partner for the report, estimates aggregate visual attention for every 1,000 delivered impressions. The figures are not meant to rank media effectiveness, but they reveal how differently the same count of impressions can perform:
- Instagram Reels: 692 seconds
- YouTube skippable video: 1,957 seconds
- YouTube non-skippable video: 3,579 seconds
- CTV: 7,286 seconds
- Linear TV: 7,771 seconds
That is a useful planning frame. Two plans can deliver identical reach and completely different memory potential.
The measurement barrier
About 92% of marketers rank the lack of reliable or standardised attention measurement among their top three challenges. All respondents said an agreed industry standard would accelerate adoption. That is rare alignment in a fragmented market.
Creative is attention’s other half
Attention is not only a function of where an ad appears. Around 94% of marketers say creative is at least as important as placement in earning attention. However, only 14% say they systematically adapt creative to different formats and lengths. In other words, the industry agrees that creative drives attention, but most teams are not building for it.
What marketers can do now
The report makes the case for attention as an input alongside reach, not a replacement for it. That has practical consequences: compare formats using attention benchmarks, test budget shifts when data shows stronger memory potential, and treat format-specific creative as a planning variable rather than an afterthought.
As Moneka Khurana, Managing Director and Board of Directors at MMA India, puts it, brands can be seen everywhere, but being seen is not the same as being noticed.
Source: Afaqs!
