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New Research Challenges "Engagement" In Magazine Ads

  • Ad Age, Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:02 PM
There's bad news for marketers who count magazine ads as a major element in their advertising plans. New research suggests that ads in magazines that deliver a high level of so-called engagement from their readers perform no better than ads in magazines whose readers pay considerably less attention. Engagement has been a popular buzzword in the ad industry, although its precise definition has been elusive. At its heart are marketers who want consumers to pay closer attention to their advertising messages. The survey was conducted by Starch Communications Research, which divided 25 magazines into high-engagement, low-engagement and middling camps, defining engagement by the frequency with which they are read, time spent with each issue and how much of each issue gets finished. When it examined the percentages of readers who remembered ads across the magazines, it found no link between those scores and levels of engagement. "When the buzzword of engagement became so big, starting about two years ago, we said, 'Let's really look into this,"' said Philip W. Sawyer, senior vice president at Starch. "If a magazine wasn't tabbed as a high-engagement publication, it was being discriminated against. Starch has said all along that it's a creative issue. That was our hypothesis."

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