Igor Bozovic enables Carlsberg's global digital campaigns through partners, innovation, and test and learn agendas. His latest digital media project sees him shifting focus from reach to attention.
We’ve all been there: unwinding on the sofa, attempting to watch a new show or football match, while also scrolling social feeds on a second screen. With media fragmented and consumer time finite, we — as marketers — are all fighting for that same, limited resource: consumer attention.
At Carlsberg, we recognised a crucial truth. Not all views are equal.
For years, the industry has chased reach and frequency, often treating every impression as a tally mark. But a scroll past on a small screen during a daily commute might not be the same as a minute of viewing on a living room television.
That’s why we believe one of the most valuable metrics is attention.
It’s this belief that prompted us to build our own attention model with our partners, Lumen and iProspect. This model was designed to give our teams clear data on which media to buy, when, and for what purposes, to ensure we invested in attention.
The innovation mindset: Testing long-form storytelling
To reinstate Carlsberg as a modern and progressive brand, we strongly believe in innovation. So, when we were invited to be a beta tester for the 60-second unskippable ad format on YouTube, we immediately jumped at the chance.
With this new format, we tested a simple hypothesis: a compelling narrative, delivered in the right environment, could earn — and hold — a viewer’s attention.
The first thing to consider when measuring attention is platform mechanics. For instance, on many platforms, a view can be counted after just one second. In the YouTube feed and on Shorts, however, a view is only counted when a viewer watches for 10 seconds or until the end of the video, whichever comes first. This fundamental difference means the quality and intent behind these views are inherently worth more to a brand who wants to connect with people via storytelling and not just ads.
After identifying the right channels for your goal, it’s time to create a great story.
Our UEFA Nations League "Fare Game" campaign rewarded football-fanatic taxi drivers who often miss live matches because they are working. To honour these committed fans, we surprised them by booking them a special ride to an unforgettable location, where they could watch the Germany vs. Portugal match. This was an authentic, emotional human story that demanded time to tell. We knew we had to create something really engaging in 60 seconds, so we had to keep this timeframe in mind from the outset of production. Creating content that felt native:
Our approach: Measuring the “Carlsberg effect”
We premiered our long-form hero film using the 60-second, non-skippable format on Connected TV (CTV) to our German YouTube audience. CTV works well for longer formats, in the lean-back, engaged setting of the living room, we can see whether a brand could be a welcome storyteller instead of a brief interruption.
To validate our hypothesis, we had to build an attention model, and our partners were essential to this.
“Our standard model, based on billions of eye-tracking gaze points from thousands of respondents, estimates attention to general advertising based on factors like format, placement, and viewability,” explains Mike Follett, CEO at Lumen Research.
He continues: “But it doesn't take into account things like creative design or people’s previous history with a brand. Yet, these factors are tremendously important: good creatives can generate more attention than an average ad, or convert that attention into memory or desire more efficiently.”
So we built a model that would take all of these factors into account, and help us understand if our ads got more attention or worked harder than the average. If they did, we could start to measure the “Carlsberg Effect”.
To create the model, we conducted a multi-market study using Lumen’s proprietary eye-tracking technology, focusing on how brand presence influences consumer attention and drives brand outcomes. Follet explains: “We built highly realistic, fully controllable environments across various social platforms, inserting ads for the Carlsberg brands, competitors, and some others for realism. By enabling our webcam eye-tracking technology, we captured not only whether the ads were viewable, but whether they were noticed and for how long.”
Sarah Jopson, global planning director at iProspect adds: “Working alongside Lumen and Google, we have conducted industry leading research to help identify opportunities to break platform norms and focus investment on delivering brand outcomes like increased attention. We did this via a post-test questionnaire that helped us understand recall levels, and how much attention was required to drive memory or brand choice. Putting this all together allowed us to model how many seconds of attention each platform generates, and how much attention different Carlsberg brands need to create an impact.”
This has helped us set 'attention thresholds' and identify the most cost-effective platforms and formats. Crucially, we then validated those insights by linking them directly to brand outcomes — like attention and ad recall.
The verdict: How quality attention delivered a 2.6% brand recall lift
The results confirmed our thinking. Our 60–second long hero ad achieved a 93% completion rate. To put that in context, that figure surpassed the 92% completion rate we saw for our 6 second bumper ads. Viewers watched for an average of 56.9 seconds, showing deep, sustained engagement with our story.
“We used the Carlsberg Effect model to measure attention across channels, including YouTube,” says Lumen Research’s Follett. “Overall, the attention score was more than 4X higher than Carlsberg’s benchmark for non-skippable YouTube formats.”
This high-quality attention translated directly into business impact, driving a 2.6% lift in ad recall on TV screens. Proving that investing in quality attention is a formula for building lasting brand memory.
The long-form ad, placed on big screens, significantly outperformed all other formats in terms of attention performance, often by double. The key learning is clear: to truly engage and drive message recall, target the big screens where viewers are already in a mindset to consume longer-form content. And prioritise creative storytelling — a compelling, authentic, and human narrative is the most powerful tool a marketer has. When you respect the consumer’s time with creative, relevant content, they will reward you with their attention.
Our success was fueled by wanting to drive innovation and using a test and learn approach. That’s something we’ll be doing again in the future to ensure our brand continues to connect with audiences in the right way. We’re also rolling out this test to new markets in 2026.
