Havas Media North America and Adelaide, the leader in the field of attention-based media quality measurement, today announced the launch of the Meaningful Ad Unit (MAU), an industry-first proprietary metric to be utilized for its U.S. clients. Havas Media will integrate the MAU into its Meaningful Media Marketplace. Adelaide’s AU metric predicts a media placement’s probability of attention and subsequent impact using a machine learning model trained with full-funnel outcome data. This partnership furthers Havas Media’s commitment to measuring attention to provide more meaningful outcomes for clients and move the industry forward.
Over the past three years, Adelaide and Havas Media have proven that buying media with higher AU scores drives more consequential media performances and leads to more meaningful outcomes for clients. Havas Media has demonstrated that high-AU exposures deliver up to 132% lift in upper-funnel KPIs compared to low-AU placements.
Planning & Optimization for Meaningful Experiences
Recently, Havas Media North America has started exploring more advanced applications of attention metrics, like Adelaide’s AU Flight Control solution. This solution identifies the minimum AU rating that delivers the strongest correlation between ad exposures and outcomes, reflecting the optimal level of media quality and frequency needed to drive specific KPIs.
By harnessing AU insights to build high-attention media plans for Finance, CPG, and Spirits brands, Havas Media North America has seen 2–3x improvements in campaign performance among U.S. clients. For a financial services client, the team achieved a 30% higher Conversion Rate and a 20% lower Cost per Conversion by prioritizing high-AU media.
Given the positive impact of incorporating attention data into planning and optimization processes, future initiatives include using AU as an input in Havas Media’s Meaningful Rating Point (MRP) and Meaningful Media Marketplace. These tools facilitate the creation of impactful Media Experiences by identifying the most meaningful placements for the target audience based on campaign KPIs.
The MAU will be utilized as a quality factor of impressions used to optimize reach and frequency.
Programmatic Activation & Media Quality Audit
As part of this partnership, Havas Media North America’s programmatic trading desk will leverage the MAU within custom algorithms, pre-bid segments, and through custom private marketplaces. By dynamically buying against optimal MAU scores, Havas Media North America grants clients access to higher-quality, more meaningful inventory that drives better outcomes against KPIs while reducing waste.
Havas Media North America clients will also benefit from AU audits, which offer a transparent baseline of media quality and meaningfulness across display, online video, walled gardens, podcasts, CTV, and linear. These insights will enable Havas Media North America teams to develop AU goals and refine media plans by maximizing the relevance of the context in which key messages are delivered to audiences.
The comprehensive Meaningful Attentive toolkit will empower Havas Media North America clients to activate media plans that minimize waste through platform, channel, and placement selection driven by an evidence-based measure of media quality.