“Our industry has used the term ‘engagement’ liberally for two decades, with little consensus on what it means.Instead, we turn around and optimize our advertising campaigns towards simplistic metrics that reward high-volume, low-involvement content,” says Bryan Melmed, vice president, insights services, for Exponential.”
Exponential have published a timely whitepaper on engagement to help marketers completely reappraise their online ad tactics in the wake of three rising trends in online advertising.
The paper – available for free here –
By Bryan Melmed, vice president, insights services, for Exponential
The trends they cite are the increasing competition for consumer time, the realisation “big data is a lemon” and that the industry has been focusing on driving completely the wrong type of user behaviour.
Exponential claims the lack of understanding around user engagement – a common but misunderstood term – leads to the wrong types of incentives, poor results and wasted ad budgets.
“Our industry has used the term ‘engagement’ liberally for two decades, with little consensus on what it means. Instead, we turn around and optimize our advertising campaigns towards simplistic metrics that reward high-volume, low-involvement content,” says Bryan Melmed, vice president, insights services, for Exponential.”
They’re proposing video is the answer. The paper, erm succinctly titled, “Engagement: Not Just a Buzzword, The Art of Driving Active Attention with Your Next Consumer,” essentially provides a simple recipe for how brands can drive engagement using video ads – to the benefit of themselves and publishers – and fix what the aim of online advertising should be.
Melmed, goes onto say, “We need to think critically about why engagement is important in the first place and what metrics we can use that truly capture active user attention.”
The paper – available for free here – covers five key points
- Engagement should be discussed in terms of capturing conscious active attention Big data is ultimately insufficient without effective application of engagement tactics because data by itself may be too convoluted, overvalued and intrusive
- Emphasising engagement is not only cost-effective, it aligns incentives for advertisers, publishers and vendors
- Opt-in user interaction is best enhanced through video advertising and rich media – particularly with optimal use of the teaser and brand consistency in interactive elements
- When measuring brand impact, advertisers should look at cognitive, emotional and physical engagement on a spectrum that is well-tailored to the specific campaign. This includes larger, brand awareness metrics such as purchase intent, sentiment and intent to seek more information to more physical metrics including conversion rate, dwell time and interaction rate.
- Get the white paper HERE