Slightly scary: a whole roomful of media execs shouting "GRAB!" into their phones as part of a public, digital out-of-home game staged by Megaphone at the DOOH forum. Even scarier: the clip they played of a theater full of 5-year-olds playing the game, unencumbered by the self-conscious reserve of adults. Whoa nelly. But if you want engagement... there it is.

Dr. Marci recounted an example of the same car ad in two different contexts. The first was a traditional "cold open" -- appearing following content that's not related to cars or anything. The second was an integration with the show "Glee," following a scene in which cheerleaders were washing cars. Guess which car ad received substantially higher emotional engagement from the get-go?

A very interesting comparison of TV and online video engagement from Dr. Marci using eye-tracking technology. A eye-catching, highly produced Blackberry ad featuring a U2 concert was super-engaging on TV -- but in the context of an Internet environment (Web page) eye-tracking data showed shockingly few even looked at the video ad until about half-way through, when it was impossible to ignore.

Remember how everyone was debating the meaning of engagement a few years ago, and then kind of just dropped it? Dr. Carl Marci actually has a quantitative, empirical definition of engagement. Conscious brain operations take up only 5%-25% of total brain activity, says Dr. Marci. Innerscope uses biometric approaches (skin response, etc.) to try to understand consumer responses to advertising by plumbing the depths of those other 75%-95% -- ultimately producing a measure of engagement based on physiological and emotional responses.

Six Flags, as you probably know, has some great amusement parks. And some not-so-great ads featuring a creepy "old guy." But what you may not have known, is they also operate one of the biggest place-based digital out-of-home networks. In about an hour or so, they will announce a story that crosses those two things over to generate some awareness for cereal marketer Post Foods. The news will be that Post has tapped Six Flags to run a national promotion featured on 12 million boxes of Post's cereal brands – including Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles, Honey Combs, Waffle Crisp …

"Only things which work on an unconscious level really have a change of breaking through" to influence consumer behavior, says Dr. Carl Marci, CEO of Innerscope. That's because we're "irrational... emotional creatures" (Marci distinguishes between "rational" and "rationalizing" -- he says we experience the world and "try to rationalize events after they've already happened."

Joe Philport of the Traffic Audit Bureau -- in the audience at the Digital Out-of-home Forum -- just said he thinks the OVAB metric is "outstanding." Awww! Industry love-fest. Philport is hopeful that the similarity and overlap between the TAB and OVAB metrics will make media planning a breeze... once people in the industry get a handle on how to use the numbers, which he believes will take about a year.

"TV measurement is broken in America," says Tony Jarvis, by way of introducing a point about looking for standardized measurement in DOOH. "The issue isn't 'Do we follow television or not?'" says Debbie Reichig, SVP, Biz Dev & Marketing, Clear Channel Outdoor. "You have to have two different sets of measures. Something to measure across and something vertically." Calling television measurement "a yardstick that allows business to be done in a multi-billion-dollar business," Paul Lindstrom, Senior Vice President, Nielsen Co. asks,"Do you want something like that? Of course you do." "Although television is great and billions of …

Tony Jarvis giveth, and then he taketh away during his comments on the measurement panel at the Digital Out-of-Home Media Forum this morning. “Nielsen has taken a great first step with measuring a fourth screen report,” Jarvis said of Nielsen’s recent launch of a new syndicated research report measuring audiences for place-based, digital out-of-home video networks. “This is Tony talking,” Jarvis reminded the startled audience. Then he explained the “dilemma,” which is that Nielsen only measures so many place-based networks, begging the question of how the industry assesses those networks measured by other firms, like say, Arbitron. …

This just in: Fox Broadcasting Co. has announced a two-year initiative to research and test how human beings interact physiologically and neurologically with different media screens (ie. TV, online, mobile, etc.). Fox said it will work with Boston-based Innerscope Research, which uses various biometric technologies to gauge how people interact with various screen content. Fox said the research will focus on “engagement measures for on-air and cross-platform promotions,” utilizing Innerscope’s “Brand Immersion Model,” which helps explain physiological responses to advertising and media content. “We’ve seen repeated confirmation through various ROI measures that television’s role in building brands and influencing …