by Dana Lee on 30th Apr 2026 in Video Interviews

In this episode of A Coffee With... Heather Dansie, insight director at Newsworks, joins ExchangeWire's John Still over a latte to chat attention and advertising effectiveness.

Newsworks is the marketing body for the UK's national news brands, championing the diverse content produced daily across all platforms. Heather explains that news brands are exceptionally effective advertising environments because of the high levels of attention they command.

The conversation delves into the link between attention and brand metrics, as well as the "attention imbalance" in ad spend. Moreover, overcoming outdated brand safety fears is essential to fully leverage the benefits of news brand environments and support the role of quality journalism in society.

Campaign Effectiveness in News Brands

A Newsworks study conducted with Lumen and effectiveness expert Peter Field found that high-quality news environments yield higher ad attention. News brand display and video ads exceeded the crucial two-second threshold for cognitive processing to occur. Display ads also received 40% more attention.

"Information is infinite; we just create more and more and more data, and more and more content. But if you think about an individual's amount of attention, it's finite. So it's becoming more and more difficult to grab someone's attention. And I think when you do have someone's attention, you can really translate that into power and into profit." —Heather Dansie

Additionally, there is a direct correlation between the attention generated by news brand content and positive lifts in brand metrics. Beyond viewability, the study explored what consumers give attention to, and how that influences their behaviour (purchase, preference, consideration) and fuels business outcomes like market share, pricing power, and profit.

The Attention Imbalance

Ten years ago, 70% of ad spend went to high-attention media like TV, radio, and news. Today, that balance has flipped, with majority of spend now in low-attention media. While low-attention media has strengths and a role in planning, the study prompts a reassessment of the current media mix.

Notably, IPA data showed that high-attention campaigns saw 12% better market share than low-attention campaigns. However, the results were most striking when news brands were added to lower-attention (primarily digital) campaigns: a 64% uplift in brand metrics, a 50% increase in business effects, and an 89% increase in profit.

Brand Safety & Blocklists

UK news brands have multiple layers of human and automated protections, making them inherently brand-safe. Ironically, an article on a newspaper’s front page, the most commercially effective ad placement, is often avoided online due to historic keyword blocklists.

Yet, studies have shown that environment matters more than content. Quality news brand contexts create a halo effect; under that halo, most consumers would trust that an ad near a controversial story doesn’t imply endorsement of a certain viewpoint. Advertisers should trust news brands to place ads appropriately, rather than relying on restrictive, overly cautious blocklists.

Ad BlockingAd SpendAdvertisingAttentionNews