67% of users report banner blindness, need attention-based optimisation: Nabajit Nath

Nabajit Nath, Sales Director at Kargo India, used the e4m-iDAC 2025 summit to unveil two groundbreaking products aimed at solving the attention crisis in digital advertising. The launches come as the 22-year-old global ad-tech platform strengthens its foothold in the Indian market.

Opening with a poetic reference to the modern attention economy, Nath highlighted the core challenge facing advertisers today. "Every brand, every agency is looking for the attention of the user, but eventually, is the user really attentive to your creatives? Are the creatives shouting out from the screens that the user is looking at, or are the users just going through the ad and just consuming the content?" These questions, he emphasized, are what Kargo has been answering globally for over two decades.

The first major announcement was Kargo's exclusive partnership with Amazon DSP, allowing Indian brands to use enhanced creative formats on the platform. "If you're using Amazon DSP, then you might be running normal display campaigns and video banners, but if you use the Kargo enhanced formats, then the engagement really triples the amount and clicks double or quadruple sometimes," Nath explained, calling it a "game changer" for shopper-focused campaigns.

The second product, Spotlight, represents what Kargo calls "the world's first user behavior-led timed ads." Unlike traditional templates that force ads into pre-roll, mid-roll, or interstitial positions, Spotlight displays advertisements only at optimal moments based on user behavior – content completion, attention shift, idle time, or scroll activity.

"What about running a campaign only when the user is active or inactive, or at the optimal time to show an ad – not following a template but only when the user is prepared for an ad?" Nath asked, highlighting the innovation's departure from conventional approaches.

The results speak for themselves: Spotlight delivers CTRs 6x higher than industry averages (approximately 1% compared to 0.2 - 0.4%), 2.1x higher viewability, and 50% more attention. User satisfaction scores average 4.4 - 4.6 out of 5, indicating strong consumer acceptance of the non-intrusive format.

Nath also addressed growing concerns about ad placement quality, noting that Kargo is one of only two SSPs globally certified as 100% brand-safe and 100% MFA (Made for Advertising) free by third-party verifiers. He cited Nielsen research showing 67% of users reporting banner blindness, making innovative formats increasingly crucial in India's cluttered digital landscape.

The platform's creative capabilities extend beyond standard display, offering interactive formats including 360-degree experiences for tourism brands, store locator creatives with integrated maps, video-plus-carousel combinations, and rotating "runway wheel" banners. All campaigns utilize IBM Watson's NLP model for contextual targeting, analyzing headlines, topics, sentiment, readability, and demographics.

Inviting agencies and brands to pilot the new offerings, Nath emphasized ease of integration: activation requires only seat IDs for Amazon DSP campaigns, with Kargo's team handling creative enhancement without additional line items.