Mumbai, Aug. 7 -- India's digital advertising market may be booming, worth Rs.50,000 crore, but according to new research, much of that money may be chasing the wrong metric.

A landmark study by Snap Inc., WPP Media and Lumen Research, India's largest of its kind, found that attention, not impressions or view-through rate (VTR), is the real driver of brand outcomes, particularly among the country's 377 million-strong Gen Z audience.

For years, digital advertisers have assumed that if an ad is viewable, it must be effective. But the study tracked the real eye movement of over 3,000 Indians aged 16-35 and found otherwise.

The findings were clear: attention is eight times better than VTR at predicting brand recall, and four times better a...