At the FT, AU scores have become central to how campaigns are packaged and priced, with clients now requesting them in RFPs.
Some of the publisher’s ad formats have outperformed standard display ads by 40% to 52% on AU, according to Spain, which validates its historical emphasis on creating ad environments that prioritize reader engagement.
The FT recently debuted a new high-attention product, called FT Focus, that reflects this philosophy.
From metric to market-maker
Since its founding in 2019, Adelaide has focused on positioning AU as the logical successor to viewability.
Unlike viewability, which measures whether an ad is seen, AU attempts to quantify how well it is likely to be seen, taking into account placement, format, and surrounding context.
The concept has slowly gained traction among marketers and media owners. Adelaide now works with over 125 partners, including DSPs, SSPs, and major publishers, and has been integrated into Google’s Display & Video 360.
On Tuesday, the measurement firm even published a case study using AU to compare YouTube inventory to that of other premium CTV streamers, which found YouTube ads to be 19% more effective.
“Every other market pays for quality,” said Guldimann. “In advertising, we’ve been stuck with proxies like CPM. We’re trying to change that by making media quality predictable.”
The goal is to position AU alongside legacy buying currencies like GRPs, but with a focus on the depth rather than the breadth of exposure.
“It’s like Carfax or FICO for media,” Guldimann said. “We want to build a market-driven currency where price approaches value.”
Challenges remain for attention-based buying
Despite its momentum, the ecosystem still faces hurdles.
While AU offers a conceptual improvement over viewability, it brings its own challenges—particularly around education and standardization, according to U of Digital head of innovation Myles Younger.
“There’s an educational lift that has to happen,” said Younger.
Publishers may also have to rethink how they bundle inventory.
For instance, publishers often bundle high and low-quality inventory together to offer ad buyers scale, which helps publishers’ margins. A framework like AU, while beneficial in many respects to publishers, could put some of those margins at risk.
Despite these growing pains, the kind of industrywide reorientation that Adelaide is working to realize is a positive, according to Younger.
“Anything that moves the market toward judging quality is a good thing,” Younger said.
