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Despite Economy, Industry Still Searching for Engagement

  • Adweek , Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:30 AM
At a time when marketers are slashing budgets and generally losing patience with campaigns that lack direct evidence of success, hopeful ad sellers and buyers are still trying to qualify and quantify "engagement," that nebulous term that can refer to just about anything that isn't a click or an impression. For example, Betawave, a network of virtual world, animation and social networking sites, is looking to strike deals with brands based on how much attention its publishers generate, rather than the number of impressions.

"It's like going to a 3-D movie without the glasses," Matt Freeman, CEO of Betawave, tells Adweek. "The Internet is more dimensional, but [for the most part] measurement criteria are the same as a one-way medium. You don't have the glasses so you're not appreciating the dimensions."

Ian Schafer, CEO of independent shop Deep Focus, agrees, adding that impression measurement misses the real power of social media programs, for instance. "The goals of a lot of these ads is to get people to see content others have created or invite others," he said. "It's not so much about the initial impression, but the lasting impressions created subsequently." However, as Dave Yovanno, CEO of Gigya, points out, even though "there's a lot of desire by advertisers to figure out new measures...they're so entrenched that it's hard to move them."

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