• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 12, 2006

Court TV, backed by a group of some of Madison Avenue's biggest media shops, has achieved what it considers to be a crucial first step toward the development of an industry consensus for an increasingly important, but so far ill-defined advertising metric: engagement. The project, which was supported by Carat, Mediaedge:cia, Starcom and Inteprublic's Magna Global, Initiative and Universal McCann units, claims to have identified all of the key words and/or phrases that best describe viewer involvement with TV programming, and potentially, how deeply they might be engaged with the ads that run it.

The study, which was conducted by Copernicus, a highly regarded consumer researcher that is part of Aegis Group's Synovate division, is drawn from an extensive review of the past several decades of industry research on the subject of TV audience engagement, as well as a national consumer survey conducted by Copernicus in February. The result is what might be likened to a Rossetta Stone for defining engagement: a set of 50 word descriptors and 41 phrases that can be used to identify involvement across television programming.

Those terms and phrases have been further refined into a battery of 22 unique measures the study's sponsors believe can be used to develop precise methods for measuring viewer involvement.

The terms includes such adjectives as "absorbing," "suspenseful," and "convincing," and phrases such as: "The program made me feel better about myself" and "During the suspenseful parts I'm sure my heart was racing."

"Is it the panacea everyone has been looking for? No, but it is an important first step," says Lyle Schwartz, senior vice president-director of research and marketplace analysis at Mediaedge:cia. Schwartz says the findings, which are based on a survey of 549 people, still needs to be vetted against a larger sample. But he said the effort provides a solid foundation for doing that and moving the frequently Babel-like discussion surrounding engagement forward.

Ultimately, Schwartz says Madison Avenue is less interested in audience involvement with television programming, as it is with the effect that has on television advertising, and the Copernicus research is providing some new glints into that.

Among the study's initial conclusions, are the fact that there is a direct correlation between program involvement and advertising recall, and that viewer involvement varies by age, gender and other demographic characteristics.

Viewers identified as "highly involved," for example, were found to be three times more likely as "low involved viewers" to recall advertising in the programs they watched.

Demographically, females are more likely to be involved in a program then males, while younger viewers - especially adults 18 to 34 - are 50 percent more likely to recall advertising in programs they are involved with.

The effort is part of a broader and more ambitious plan by Court TV to try to identify the metrics and tangible elements of its TV advertising buys that can measure the kind of "ROI," or return on investment, its clients have been clamoring for. Engagement, and involvement have emerged as a key to that discussion, not just at Court TV, but also across the industry at large, says Court TV's executive vice president-advertising sales, adding that the Copernicus study is just one part of a continuing effort.

Over the last couple of years, Court TV has gone a step further than most TV outlets, and actually negotiated upfront advertising guarantees with agencies based on some form of engagement measure. Carat, Magna, Mediaedge:cia and Starcom were among those shops, but Collier declined to say exactly how those deals work, or how the new learning might impact those deals.

Court TV also was recently acquired outright by and merged into a bigger cable TV organization, Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System, but it is unclear whether other Turner networks will be adapting the strategy into their sales efforts.

"Our Court TV cousins are going to spearhead this for us," says Turner spokesman Sal Petruzzi, adding that the findings may find application in the broader TV world. "It's not just Court TV-specific. It's marketplace-specific."