WANT ENGAGEMENT?

Make a More Engaging Ad

By Erwin Ephron

It’s sloppy to talk about using engagement in planning without being specific. Media engagement and advertising engagement are very different things.

Advertising engagement is the goal, but it is not very useful for media planning. It erases the line between what the medium does and what the ad does, which is basic to any good measure of media value. A point we will return to shortly.

Media engagement is far less important, so it is even less useful. Media are often engaging, but it stops there. They don’t usually pass that engagement through to the ads they carry.

Some recent evidence is in a landmark print study from FCB, Meredith Corporation and Knowledge Networks. It found that self-defined reader engagement with a magazine explained very little of the variation in response to the advertising. Much more was explained by the message.

THE DOOR MEN OF ENGAGEMENT

Media seem to work as the door men of advertising engagement. They control whether the audience gets to see and respond to the advertising. So the key to selecting media for advertising engagement is to understand how they exercise that control.

Unfortunately that’s not what the industry seems to be doing. Instead measures of advertising engagement are being pushed as a way to improve the ratings.

OPPORTUNITY TO SEE

Our ratings count people who have the “opportunity to see” ads in the media we buy. This is not the same as people “seeing” advertising. Especially now that clutter and the remote encourage inattention and commercial avoidance.

Advertising engagement would jump us over this gap in the ratings by counting only people who are, for some rational or emotional reason, “pulled into” or “involved with” the advertising.

The ARF calls engagement “A Search for 21st Century GRPs.” The choice of words is surprising. Historically media are measured by audience delivery. Advertising is measured by response. Engagement-based ratings would measure media by response.

THE ARF MEDIA MODEL

We’ve bumped into this problem before. In 2002, the Advertising Research Foundation published “Making Better Media Decisions.” This was its second attempt at telling advertisers how to measure media.

The ARF chose advertising exposure as the standard because it is the highest-level media measure (there are eight) which is not confused by creative effects.

The principle is media shouldn’t be credited or punished for response to the advertising they carry, since it is beyond their control.

This is the position taken by nearly all media. Why should they be paid less because the product is poor or the ads are weak? They have a point.

ENGAGED OR ENGAGE-ABLE?

To sensibly include engagement in planning we have to combine media research, which measures the size and nature of the audience, with creative research which measures response to specific brand advertising.

Advertising engagement measures are ongoing, using a wide assortment of copy-testing techniques. They can tell us how likely it is that a given ad will engage a prospect.

Measures of media’s contribution to advertising engagement are almost non-existent. They would tell us which programs, channels, time periods or media are more likely to deliver engaged, or more to the point, engage-able, consumers to the advertising.

The media variables that appear to help open the door to advertising engagement are: The suitability of the message to the medium’s audience (user targeting). The message delivery package, (including clutter). The exposure situation (where, when and other activities/ distractions). And the size of the unit.

The first measure relates to relevance, the last three to attentiveness.

GATHERER AND GATEKEEPER

To sum up. Media is first an audience gatherer then an ad engagement gatekeeper. It can assist engagement by attracting an audience suited to the message and by keeping that audience attentive. Or it can do the opposite.

Media content in itself usually does not create advertising engagement. That is done by the advertising.

This model suggests that indicators of media engagement like “Quads” (frequency and duration of program viewing) have little bearing on advertising engagement. A conclusion supported by agency research.

If you doubt the limited role of media as the doorman in advertising engagement, consider that ads for similar products with identical consumer targets running in identical media (automobiles are a good example) can still vary widely in most measures of consumer response.

ENGAGEMENT AND PLANNING

So how do we bring engagement into media planning? Certainly adjusting audience counts for consumers who actually see the ads is an essential first step. Identifying the media characteristics that encourage advertising engagement (as outlined above) is another. Both are within reach.

But looking to media for advertising engagement crosses the line. That’s not media’s job.

In the immortal words of FCB’s Roger Baron, “If you want engagement, make a more engaging ad.”

- January 11, 2006 -

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