In an interesting study by Saatchi & Saatchi, two identical twins were put on display in an art gallery as a test of aesthetics. After having participants view the twins, they were asked a series of questions like ‘who do you think has a better sex life?’ or ‘More parking tickets?’. The catch was that the only difference between the two individuals was that one twin was chewing gum and the other one was not.

Astonishingly, the twin chewing gum was favored by more than 73% of the participants. Now how does this relate to digital marketing? It’s all about impressions. People’s attention spans are fleeting and this number is dwindling by the year and by the month even. Findings like this fuel the optimization of ads to have better use of the scarce resource of consumers’ attention. Ads can be better tuned to grab the most attention in the smallest windows of time.

In a world where costs are determined per impression and per click, anything to make the most use of that is as beneficial as can be.

Link to the video here.