81% of Indian Marketers Prioritise Reach, But Only 17% Prioritise Attention Quality, finds Beyond Reach Report

Reach continues to dominate media planning in India, but marketers are increasingly questioning whether all reach delivers equal value. According to Beyond Reach, a new industry report launched by Publicis Media India and MMA India, 81% of Indian marketers rank reach or incremental reach among their top three media-allocation metrics, compared with only 17% who say the same for attention quality.

The finding highlights a growing gap between the way media is planned today and the industry’s appetite for a more quality-led approach to exposure. While reach remains fundamental, the report argues that attention can provide an additional layer of understanding around the quality and potential effectiveness of that reach.

Marketers appear ready to act. While 69% say attention is currently absent from their media plans or does not influence media decisions, 86% say they would be likely or very likely to reallocate budgets if robust attention evidence showed that another allocation could generate stronger brand memory. The findings suggest that the challenge is not necessarily a lack of appetite for attention-led planning, but the need for measurement that is credible, comparable and actionable.

Measurement Remains The Biggest Barrier To Adoption.

Around 92% of marketers rank the lack of reliable or standardised attention measurement among their top three challenges, while 100% believe an agreed industry standard would accelerate adoption. Together, the findings point to a market where the appetite for attention-led decision-making is ahead of the industry’s ability to measure and apply attention consistently.

The Data Illustrates Why The Distinction Matters.

Lumen, the Attention Partner for Beyond Reach, contributed India-specific attention benchmarks, highlighting how the quality and volume of attention can vary across media environments and formats. Lumen’s India planning norms estimate the aggregate visual attention generated for every 1,000 delivered impressions. On this measure, 1,000 Instagram Reels impressions generate approximately 692 attentive seconds, compared with 1,957 seconds for YouTube skippable video, 3,579 for YouTube non-skippable video, 7,286 for CTV and 7,771 for linear TV. The benchmarks are not intended as a ranking of media effectiveness but illustrate how equal volumes of impressions can deliver significantly different levels of human attention, including across formats within the same platform.

Attention Is Not Just A Media Question.

The report also highlights that attention is not purely a media metric. Media creates the opportunity to be noticed while creative determines how effectively that opportunity is used. While 94% of marketers say creative is at least as important as placement in earning attention, only 14% systematically adapt creative to different formats and lengths.

The finding reinforces the report’s broader argument that attention should influence decisions across the marketing process. That includes not only where media is placed, but also which formats are selected, how frequency is managed, how creative is designed for different attention environments, and how budgets are ultimately allocated.

Lalatendu Das, CEO, Publicis Media South Asia, said, “Reach will remain fundamental to any media strategy, but scale alone does not tell us whether an exposure has the quality or opportunity to drive an outcome. The ‘Beyond Reach’ report brings attention into the planning equation, helping marketers understand not just how many people a plan reaches, but the quality of those exposures and their potential to build memory and influence brand choice. The opportunity now is to make that thinking practical, measurable and actionable in media investment and optimisation.”

Moneka Khurana, MD & BOD, Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) India, said, “Brands today can be seen everywhere, but being seen is not the same as being noticed,” said Moneka Khurana, Managing Director, Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) India. “What marketers need is evidence they can trust and compare. ‘Beyond Reach’ shows what happens when the industry builds that evidence together: Publicis Media’s planning expertise, Lumen’s India attention benchmarks and the perspectives of marketers turn attention from a concept into a clear point of view. It doesn’t replace reach. It qualifies it, so attention becomes a real input into planning, creative and investment decisions.”

Beyond Reach ultimately argues that the next evolution of media planning is not about replacing reach, but about understanding its quality, giving marketers a clearer way to connect exposure with attention, memory and ultimately, brand outcomes.

For more details, read the complete report here – https://mmaglobal.com/documents/beyond-reach