• Ad Age, Monday, January 14, 2008 11:01 AM

For all the talk of "engagement," advertisers still covet "eyeballs" as the No. 1 criteria for buying media, according to a recent survey. Throughout media history, advertisers have gone where the eyeballs are, but new media promised new ways to measure how long and how well people interact with ads-also known as "engagement."

Even so, less than half of 2,047 marketers surveyed by Advertiser Perceptions ranked the promising marketing tactic among their top five criteria. Marketers said the most important statistic on the Web is return on investment.

Other interesting data: despite a looming U.S. recession, 76 percent of respondents said they would increase online spending in 2008 and 55 percent said they would increase mobile spending. Just 22 percent said they would raise network TV spending, while 34 percent said they would allocate more of their budgets to cable.

Meanwhile, 53 percent said broadcast spending would be flat; 25 percent said it would be down. Many marketers cited the writer's strike as a big reason for cutting back on broadcasting. Predictably, the big losers will be newspapers and radio, as 37 percent plan to spend less on newspapers, while 30 percent will spend less on radio.

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