From Sabermetrics to Attention Metrics: What MarCommsProfessionals Can Learn from Baseball’s Evolving Data Revolution

As we enter the last month of baseball’s regular season, with the playoff picture coming into focus and every play and inning increasing in import, management and coaches are digging into metrics. Most of us have probably seen Moneyball, the entertaining movie about Sabermetrics, its first inside-the-game advocate Billy Beane, and the magical season of the 2002 Oakland Athletics. Two things are worth mentioning here: the Oakland Athletics still haven’t won the World Series, and every baseball team has an analytics department now.?

You can read more on the impact of Sabermetrics from John Brocklebank at Samford University here. It revolutionized the sport by shifting the focus from traditional stats like home runs and runs batted in (RBIs), to deeper insights like on-base percentage (OBP) and wins above replacement (WAR). For years, a player’s batting average was the key indicator of his value–how many times did he come to the plate, and how often did he hit the ball? Now, we look at OPS, which itself is a combination of two other Sabermetrics stats, on-base percentage and slugging.?

Essentially, all of these new data points tell you not just what happened, but why—and they help predict what could happen next. Who wouldn’t like to know a little bit more about the future?

No surprise, like anything that questions the status quo, it was met with considerable resistance from old-school scouts and baseball traditionalists. Many argued that baseball couldn’t be reduced to a set of equations. They believed the human element—the gut feeling a seasoned scout might have about a player—was just as important, if not more so, than cold, hard numbers.?

I’m reminded here of the great psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who helped develop the theory of behavioral economics, and who noted in his must-read book Thinking, Fast and Slow about stock picking, “for the large majority of individual investors, taking a shower and doing nothing would have been a better policy than implementing the ideas that came to their minds.”

Critically, at first, Sabermetrics was viewed as incomplete. Sure, OBP and WAR could tell you a lot about a player’s contribution, but they didn’t capture everything—fielding ability, intangibles like leadership, and even the mental aspects of the game were harder to quantify. Critics pointed out that Sabermetrics sometimes failed in high-pressure situations, where individual character mattered as much as performance. Even Billy Beane acknowledged that, while the data-driven approach worked well in the regular season, it wasn’t always enough in the playoffs.

Since those early days, Sabermetrics has matured, with coaches and management using their own blends of specialized stats along with experience, knowledge, and, yes, intuition to shape their decision making. Baseball’s shift from pure data to a blend of analytics and intuition mirrors where we are with Attention Metrics in marketing, branding, and communications today.

Since the dawn of digital platforms, powerful tracking devices in our pockets and on our wrists, and the cascade of corresponding data, marketers have relied on easy-to-understand stats like clicks, impressions, and likes. How long does someone remain on a web page? What got them from a Google search to the shopping cart? But if everyone is using the same tools, relying on the same day, and making familiar adjustments in response, the playing field, as it were, is leveled. In response, the conversation is shifting from Did they see it? to Did it really capture their focus?

Attention metrics are the next evolution in understanding how audiences engage with content—moving beyond basic clicks and impressions to measure the quality of attention. These metrics track things like dwell time, scroll depth, and interaction rates, offering a clearer picture of whether content actually resonates. Unlike traditional engagement metrics like clicks or impressions, attention metrics aim to assess the quality of the viewer's focus, often in real time. Attention metrics gained traction as privacy regulations and cookie limitations pushed marketers to find better ways to measure engagement.?

Some of these metrics may include:

1. Engagement Signals: These track how users interact with content, such as scroll speed, hover time, clicks, and touches on screens.
2. Exposure Metrics: This includes how much of the content was visible to the viewer and for how long (e.g., viewable time, share of screen, audibility for video).
3. Emotional and Cognitive Attention: Some platforms are even incorporating biometric data like eye tracking, facial recognition, or brain activity to assess attention at a deeper level.

The key idea behind attention metrics is that not all views or interactions are equal. For instance, brief exposure to an ad may not be as impactful as sustained engagement, and different types of attention (e.g., passive vs. active) have varied effects on brand awareness, recall, and conversion rates. Integrating these deeper insights can transform the way campaigns are built and evaluated.?

There is, of course, resistance. And, unrealistic expectations. I remember at the dawn of viral marketing, as a Marketing Director, I would be approached by consultants who could help me get a campaign to “go viral.” Really? You do know that no marketing person was involved with making the Ice Bucket Challenge a sensation, right?

The lesson from Sabermetrics is that while engagement data can open up new insights and inform compelling strategies, there are always limits and surprises. In baseball, WAR might tell you the value of a player in abstract terms, but it doesn’t tell you how they’ll perform with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, men on second and third, and down two runs.

And, like Sabermetrics, the blending of certain stats both in pre and post analysis as well as in the moment can be helpful. For example, you might get an understanding of how you’re capturing attention for an ad or campaign—but other factors, such as KPIs around creativity or overall brand trust, can contribute to whether that attention translates into sustained engagement or conversions.

Crucially, Attention Metrics shouldn’t entirely replace more established methods of evaluation. Instead, they should work together—balancing the precision of data with the intuition that marketers develop over time. As in baseball, you must respect the human element: understanding your audience’s emotional response to content, much like understanding a player’s mindset in a clutch situation, can make the difference between short-term wins and long-term success.

In the end, both Sabermetrics in baseball and Attention Metrics in marketing are about one thing: efficiency. They look beyond the obvious stats and focus on the underlying data that drives real success. In the era of short attention spans and fast-moving competition, getting useful, actionable data quickly can improve your return on investment and grow your bottom line.??

But marketing, communications, and branding—like baseball—aren’t just about the numbers. We have the data, the new trends, and the latest technologies at our disposal, but success requires something more. It’s part art, part science, and part understanding the nuances of your audience, your competition, and the wider consumer or constituent landscape.

Just as a baseball manager knows when to trust the numbers and when to go with a gut instinct in a high-stakes situation, the best creative professionals understand their team, know when to embrace a risky idea, and have a good ear tuned into trends both inside their business and beyond.?

Remember also, that agencies who “specialize” in attention metrics are not only trying to give their clients and advertisers a boost, they are also trying to boost their brand. We’re all looking for advantages, including those whose work it is to help clients look for advantages.

The takeaway? Embrace the data, leverage the insights, but don’t lose sight of the human element. We're not just marketers (or baseball managers)—we're storytellers, strategists, and problem-solvers. Sometimes the moment calls for a pitch right down the middle and sometimes a curveball. Both the data and your good instincts will help determine which, and when.