A hand-painted advertisement of a footballer covering a brick building beside a road, with traffic passing and people walking by

New research · Global Street Art × Lumen × System1

Murals get attention.
4.8x more of it.

New research from Global Street Art and attention specialists Lumen measured how people actually look at hand-painted murals. Murals delivered almost five times more attention than standard OOH.

Talk to us about murals See the findings

The research

Global Street Art put its hand-painted advertising to the test, with Lumen on attention and System1 on emotional response, measuring against the same data captured for standard OOH. Their published position is that murals earn greater attention, create a stronger emotional response and amplify reach beyond the wall. The Lumen study adds a fourth finding that follows from the first: murals hold attention long enough to be remembered.

01 · Greater attention

4.8x More attention than standard OOH 4,456 attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions, against 930

More people look. And they look for longer.

The study measured two separate things: how many people looked at all, and how long each of them looked for. Murals were ahead on both, and attention is the product of the two.

96% Viewed the mural Against 51% for standard OOH
4.6 sec Average view time Against 1.8 seconds for standard OOH
4,456 Attentive seconds Per 1,000 impressions, against 930 for standard OOH

More people notice murals. And when they do, they look for longer. Together, that adds up to 4.8x more attention than standard OOH.

Lumen and Global Street Art, The Art of Attention, 2026. Base: all participants with valid eye-tracking data.

A signwriter on a raised platform dwarfed by an enormous hand-painted face on the side of a building

Lumen

“The findings tell one consistent story. Murals earn more attention than any other OOH format.”

Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen

02 · Stronger emotion

23% Stronger emotional response than a static ad Measured by System1 for Global Street Art on the same artwork run both ways

Noticed is not the same as remembered.

Attention gets a brand noticed. What System1 measured for Global Street Art is what happens next, and it is the part that is hardest to buy: the craft, the scale and the visible human effort of a hand-painted wall produce a stronger emotional response than the same artwork as a static ad.

The comparison is unusually clean, because the artwork did not change. Global Street Art reports that with identical creative the emotional intensity measured 23 per cent higher as a mural than as a static advertisement.

  • A printed drinks advertisement on a standard roadside advertising panel beside moving traffic

    The Estrella artwork as a standard OOH panel. Campaign and photography Global Street Art.

  • The same drinks artwork hand-painted at building scale across a brick wall beside a road

    The same artwork hand-painted across a wall. Photography Global Street Art.

System1 and Global Street Art, Estrella campaign, 2023, as reported by Global Street Art.

Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35

Global Street Art also put a hand-painted campaign for Sonic the Hedgehog's 35th anniversary through System1's testing. These are their figures for their campaign, and they are the reason this section is on the page rather than left out.

4.6 System1 star rating Emotional response, out of a maximum of 5.9
Top 8% Of all outdoor For long-term brand growth potential
Top 15% Of all outdoor For short-term brand sales potential

See the campaign at Global Street Art

System1 and Global Street Art, Sega x Sonic Turns 35 campaign, 2026, as reported by Global Street Art.

A hand-painted video game character covering the end wall of a building on a street corner, with a painted hoarding running along the pavement below
Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35, hand-painted in East London by Global Street Art.
  • An aerial view of a city block with a large hand-painted advertisement filling one building end

    Scale that reads across a skyline

  • A hand-painted portrait on a building above a busy shopping street with traffic and pedestrians

    Sited where the audience already is

  • A large hand-painted advertisement covering the end wall of an apartment building above a public square

    A whole building end, hand-painted

  • A person standing smiling in front of a brightly coloured hand-painted wall

    Somewhere people want to be photographed

03 · Stronger memory

91% Peak brand consideration, during live painting Against 75% who would consider the brand after seeing the completed mural

The painting is media too.

Attention is only worth what it leaves behind, so the study tracked recall and consideration alongside viewing. The pattern is consistent: the longer people looked, the more of them remembered the brand.

36% Prompted brand recall After seeing the completed mural. More than one in three at typical mural viewing times
75% Recall at ten seconds or more Among the people who viewed the mural for ten seconds or longer
55% Recall during painting The same prompted recall measure, against 21% among those who saw the mural only once it was finished

The creation effect is the part worth planning for. A wall that takes days to paint gives a brand a reason to be filmed, photographed and talked about before the artwork is finished, and the research found recall and consideration were both at their highest while it was still going up.

Lumen and Global Street Art, The Art of Attention, 2026. Base: all participants with valid eye-tracking data.

  • A group of people standing in the street watching a large mural being painted from scaffolding

    People stop while it is going up

  • Two painters in harnesses and hard hats working on a large mural suspended from ropes

    Days of visible work, not a poster drop

  • Painters in high-visibility jackets working on a large hand-painted advertisement while people walk past

    Painted in public, in daylight

  • A close view of a gloved hand spraying paint through a stencil onto a textured wall

    Craft at a scale people can see

04 · Amplified reach

7,381 Attentive seconds, mural plus social Per 1,000 impressions, against 4,456 for the mural alone and 930 for standard OOH

One wall. More than one moment.

The study also measured what happens when mural content is planned into social. Attention increased again, to almost eight times the standard-OOH figure, turning one physical installation into something that travels.

  • The mural
  • The making-of
  • Social
  • Creators
  • PR
  • Organic sharing

Which makes the wall the start of the campaign rather than the whole of it. The making-of, the creator content, the PR and the organic sharing all come off the same production. Global Street Art cites its Nike "Winning Isn't for Everyone" mural as the worked example, where the wall drove conversation and additional impressions well beyond the people who walked past it.

Lumen and Global Street Art, The Art of Attention, 2026. Attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions, social base 236.

A phone held up photographing a crowd of people standing in front of a painted wall

What ma can do

Make your brand impossible to ignore.

From finding the right wall to creative, production, painting and amplification, ma can plan and deliver hand-painted campaigns in London, across the UK, in Ireland, in the US and internationally.

Let's talk murals See the walls
A brightly lit hand-painted advertisement on a building at night with people gathered in front of it

Got a wall in mind, or just an idea

Let's talk murals.

You do not need a finished brief. If murals are something you are considering, tell us roughly what you are thinking and we will come back with what could be possible.

View the full research at Global Street Art

Shannon Rooney
Media Account Manager, ma
+44 (0)20 3886 2111

Source: Global Street Art, The Art of Attention – A 2026 Lumen Study. Real-world eye-tracking base: 25 participants wearing Lumen eye-tracking glasses on a set route past the test mural, with attention and brand outcomes measured during live painting and after completion. Social study: 600 participants browsed a simulated feed, attentive-seconds base 236. Attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions. Photography Global Street Art. Results and methodology as reported by Global Street Art and Lumen.