Adelaide, the leader in attention-based media quality measurement and activation, has released its 2026 Outcomes Guide, offering the industry’s most comprehensive look at how attention metrics are being applied across advertising campaigns to drive measurable outcomes.

As attention becomes part of everyday media decision-making, the report brings together 60 case studies across 16 industries, each supported by third-party outcome measurement, to show how brands are using attention metrics throughout media planning, activation, and optimisation. 

Across attention-powered campaigns in 2025, advertisers saw an average 33% lift in upper-funnel KPIs and a 53% increase in lower-funnel impact. The 2026 Outcomes Guide illustrates how brands achieved—and often exceeded—those benchmarks using Adelaide’s AU metric.

"Attention has moved well beyond proof-of-concept, and this year’s Outcomes Guide reflects that shift. What we’re seeing now is execution at scale," said Marc Guldimann, CEO & co-founder of Adelaide. "As the guide has grown year-over-year, so has the sophistication of how attention is being applied. The 2026 edition demonstrates how teams are putting AU to work in-market, linking attention to full-funnel results across KPIs, industries, and objectives, and making it clear how marketers can apply these strategies in their own campaigns." 

Beyond individual campaign results, the report highlights consistent patterns in how brands are operationalising attention, such as setting minimum quality thresholds during planning, prioritising high-attention placements to maximise advertising performance, and activating attention metrics programmatically through custom bidding strategies, private marketplaces, and pre-bid targeting.

Notable case studies featured in the guide include: 

• A bank holding company that nearly tripled conversions at a lower cost, alongside double-digit lifts in familiarity and recall, by optimising its display campaign with AU 
• A global e-commerce brand that generated 3.8x more checkouts and higher revenue per impression by prioritising high-attention audio placements
• A food and beverage advertiser that saw lifts of up to 60% in unaided awareness, favourability, and purchase intent from CTV inventory scoring above KPI-specific AU floors

This year’s edition also features expanded guidance for advertisers at different stages of adoption, from a snapshot of how brands are using attention metrics today to a review of key innovations that shaped the landscape over the past year, along with a refresher on how Adelaide’s AU metric predicts attention and impact. 

As adoption grows, the Outcomes Guide underscores the importance of media quality metrics with a proven connection to business outcomes and their relevance across real-world campaigns.

Explore the full 2026 Outcomes Guide on the Adelaide website. 

Adelaide

Adelaide is a leader in the rapidly growing field of evidence-based media quality measurement. Adelaide’s attention-based metric, AU, helps advertisers make better media investment decisions. AU is an omnichannel metric that evaluates thousands of ...

More about Adelaide »

Powered by PressBox