Commentary

All Advertising Is Based On Engagement

by Joe Marchese , February 9, 2010

Engagement is not a new media buzzword. According to Princeton's WordNet, the verb engage is defined as "to consume all of one's attention or time." Isn't advertising's goal to engage people's attention with their product or service messages?

Like impressions, not all engagements are equal. There are two main factors: the medium's attributes (does it use sight, sound, motion, or some combination?) and the setting in which the medium is consumed (on the freeway, in your home, on your flat screen, in a bar).

A billboard's ability to engage one's attention is very different from radio's ability to do so. Television's engagement ability is perhaps the most powerful to date, using sight, sound and motion in a setting very conducive to "consuming all of one's attention or time": the home.

All advertising is based on engagement. Most media make money from advertising based on how good they are at transferring people's engagement with content into engagement with advertising. Magazine ads that complement an issue's content are a perfect example. On TV, the 30-second spot between program segments has long been an ideal mechanism for transferring people's attention from programmed content to advertisers'.

I don't think one can argue that all advertising is based on engagement with audience. If no one is paying attention, even peripherally, whom are you advertising to? So why does engagement sound like a dirty word when it is uttered in digital media? Digital can offer all of the necessary components of engagement that television offers (maybe not the huge flat-screen TV, but you are certainly sitting a lot closer to the screen more often).

And in addition to offering sight, sound and motion, digital offers an audience with the ability to interact -- and one ready to interact. What better measure of engagement could there be for advertisers? More than just a measure of engagement, the act of interacting provides a whole new level of engagement for advertisers and offers advertisers the ability to have a greater impact with each consumer engagement.

Television has offered the greatest scale and highest level of engagement for a very long time, and continues to offer many of the same benefits today. But once you agree that all advertising values engagement at one level or another, it's hard to deny digital's potential to give advertisers exactly what they have always been looking for: people's undivided and active attention, in a measurable way. What the industry needs to do is understand the relative value of various engagements through different media, because the truth is, one way is not necessarily better than other. A good media plan will blend traditional and digital engagements with advertising messages to achieve its goals.

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11 comments about "All Advertising Is Based On Engagement".

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Jason Krebs from Tenor/Google, February 9, 2010 at 3:16 p.m.
Just as we did to formerly good words like "network" and "premium," where everyone once knew what they meant, within 6 months the word engagement will also mean something different to everyone.
Reply

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, February 9, 2010 at 3:20 p.m.

Cacophony.

peter leeds, February 9, 2010 at 3:39 p.m.

Your assertion that there are two main factors to every impression—the medium's attributes and the setting in which the medium is consumed—completely ignores perhaps the most important factor of all, i.e. the relevance of the message/offer to the audience.

More importantly, though, what's the point of this article?

It says 'engagement' isn't a new media buzzword. Correct, so why write an article about it?

It says no one would argue that all advertising is based on engagement with audience. Um, right. It's kinda the whole idea.

It says digital offers an audience with [sic] the ability to interact. Really? Did Joe/MP travel back in time, like, 15 years to come up with that gem?

Sorry, but one truth not addressed in the article is that having a current, meaningful topic makes pieces like this one a lot more interesting for the reader.

Nelson Yuen from Stereotypical Mid Sized Services Corp., February 9, 2010 at 3:59 p.m.

LMAO. Joe's criticism from the public is always so... generational.

Peter - I have to disagree with your assumption that "relevancy" is a main factor to an "impression." (IDK how you miss-interpreted the author but...)

Relevancy is the characteristic quality or outcome of a desirable ad. It's not an attribute to the ad itself. The desire is relevancy - almost synonymous with engagement. It answers what you want, not how you do it.

Joe is talking about the physical characteristics of the ad itself, not the desired outcome.

(Just in case other readers miss-interpret this article. STARTING FROM THE 4th PARAGRAPH DOWN Please replace the word "engagement" with the word "relevancy." The article will make more sense to you.)

And btw. It's important to note, you wouldn't be able to "gauge" relevancy perfectly unless you produced an ad within the context of analyzing:

(1) the media's attributes
(2) the channel in which the audience consumes the ad

Joe Marchese, February 9, 2010 at 4:47 p.m.

Also, gauging relevancy would require taking "creative" into consideration, and while it's not always practical in practice, the goal to buy the media which gives you the best opportunity to deliver your message, how well your creative does with that opportunity takes a whole lot more factors into play.

Karen Dayan from Criteo, February 9, 2010 at 4:53 p.m.

At Criteo - http://www.criteo.com - we believe the most cost efficient & effective engagment is by personalizing the advertising delivered to the consumer. The proof is in the action desired - our personalized retargeting advertising results in both higher click-through rates (CTR) as well as, higher Continued Action Rates (CAR) and even increases consumers average cart value. I agree there are different levels of "engagement" - the one that count is the engagment that results in a desired action.

Jeff Williams from SHHH..., February 9, 2010 at 5:08 p.m.

For the record. I clicked the recommend link by accident.

peter leeds, February 9, 2010 at 5:20 p.m.

Hey Nelson. I think I catch your drift. Though the fact that the article requires re-wording or sage interpretation such as yours supports my point.

Zachary Weiner, February 9, 2010 at 6:39 p.m.

This article seems a bit more geared to people who possibly are in college? Perhaps they were low on content today, but having to explain "Engagement" to marketing profesionals seems a bit low-brow and for this demographic, not overly "engaging"

Joe Marchese, February 9, 2010 at 7:58 p.m.

@Jeff - Noted. I'll see if they can take one off. Thanks for engaging in the conversation.

@Zachary - You're obviously ahead of the curb. Every conference I have ever spoken at the audience or moderator has asked thought leaders to define engagement. Glad to see things aren't that way for everyone.

Mark McLaughlin, February 10, 2010 at 10:03 a.m.

Great column. While I agree with you, in practice working with marketers, I have found that it is very helpful to define terms specifically upfront and agree to the definitions for all conversations going forward that involve advertising and marketing objectives.

To avoid semantic debates and ambiguity, I like to define "attention" as a very distinct value from "engagement".

Attention - getting a consumer to absorb a brand's message, getting them to "pay" attention so that their mindset about your brand or offering is evolved as a result of the ad impression.

The benefits of "attention" are measured with surveys and they track things like; trust, likability, top-of-mind, intent to purchase and so on. These are all very valuable attributes that support successful brands but they have to be measured with survey type data.

Engagment - getting the consumer to do something, short of the actual purchase, that is aligned with advancing the objectives of the brand. For a car company, it might be a test drive or configuring a car online. For a real estate company, it might be providing your zip code and information about the type of home you want to buy. For movie studios, it is very often about getting people to watch the movie trailer. These are all BEHAVIORAL objectives. For our purposes, Engagement is distinct from Attention because you can measure some form of desired behavior tangibly.

Purchase - getting the consumer to buy what is offered. Direct Response advertising, by definition, is the only type of advertising where there is a direct link between the ad and the purchase and nothing much else in between. All marketers want to drive sales but most savvy marketers know that "attention" and "engagement" objectives are important investments even if they do correlate directly to purchase. These values are an excellent proxy for healthy brand sales and that, all too often, is lost on the digital industry which has thrived by delivering on pure DR metrics so far.

Joe, my point is that your article is dead on but, in practice, we can help marketers by arbitrarily defining these terms in order to reduce ambiguity and improve the articulation of objectives.