Engagement Research: Will Online Media Succeed Where Others Haven't

amp160quotEveryone39s talking about 39return on engagement39 but nobody really knows what that is right nowquot Sheryl Draizen SVP and general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau IAB told Jack Myers Media Business Report One analyst believes he has the answer in a formula he39s offeringClick to Read Myers Daily Research DataAt this month39s emetrics conference of digital media analysts Web Analytics Demystified founder Eric Peterson presented a formula with eight components such as the percent of sessions above a certain number of pageviews or the proportion of people who use quotbrandedquot search terms to come into a site that when summed provide one possible quotengagement indexquot The formula and the measures going into it are transparent and readily available he says so anyone can use it or some offshoot to figure out what works best for them Today39s common calculation of average pageviews per visit quotis a horrible key performance indicator for trying to understand the value of your audiencequot Peterson told Jack Myers Media Business Report quotIt39s too simple I can get a great deal of information from one or two pageviewsquot Yahoo has filed to patent a technique for measuring user engagement that Peterson calls quotmuch simplerquot than his formulaStill it is going to be awhile before advertisers are ready to spend based on any quotengagement indexquot Executives at major sites say they are still discouraged from using the latest applications in favor of ones that will serve pages that register new ad impressions Advertisers want an engaged audience but they pay the same amount whether an ad is displayed for one minute or five It39s also not clear that the most engaged user is necessarily the best for a marketer Peterson notes that users who are less engaged with the content may be more likely to click on an ad Gartner Inc research director Bill Gassman told Jack Myers Media Business Report there might even be quotnegative engagementquot someone who participates fully in a site but does little of commercial value List Your Job Openings at Jobs at JackMyerscom emPowered by mediabistrocomPeterson Gassman and other analysts do believe that engagement standards will be arrived at even if those standards are different for different types of sites quotIf I want to buy an ad on say Second Life or a blog environment I want to be able to buy ads in the areas of that website where people are more engagedquot Gassman notes It39s when the formulae and standards can determine not just how much a user is involved in content but also the return to the advertiser that engagement will start to take holdThe idea behind engagement is simple A user or viewer or reader who39s wrapped up in the content is more likely to consume it and perhaps any associated advertising more deeply than a user who39s just flitting by That engaged user may even be more likely to take action on ad That39s the theory at least The practice has yet to be proven and the gray areas leave a lot of room for interpretation Some websites insist their users are engaged because they spend a long time relative to other content properties Others tout a high number of pageviews per site visit or interactions like posting comments registering for emails playing games watching video purchasing goods and so on In the television arena research firm IAG equates advertising and program content recall with engagement Myers Publishing39s Emotional Connectionsamp8482 research differentiates between engagement with content attentiveness to advertising and responsiveness to advertising arguing that the three are not necessarily interrelatedA lot of the battle over how to measure success on the Web not to mention mobile devices springs from interactive media such as AJAX Flash Jack Myers Media Business Report June 11 2007 Microsoft39s Silverlight and video Throw in distributed media like widgets Jack Myers Media Business Report July 30 2007 RSS feeds social networking and podcasting and you have a mix that39s much more complex volatile and harder to define than the previous defacto standards of pageviews and the number of unique visitors per month Audience ratings services comScore and NielsenNetRatings this summer said they were moving toward measuring engagement to rank sites largely factoring in time spent on site while simultaneously lowering the relative importance of simple pageviews Their moves came months after the IAB called for audits of the services39 methodologies Executives of content sites say that by doing statistical analyses of panels of people who have opted in to allow themselves to be measured Nielsen and comScore greatly undercount users in aggregate as well as in certain demographic groups Nielsen and comScore both agreed to participate in an IABinitiated audit of their methodologies conducted by the Media Rating Council and last month announced they were moving from the quotpreauditquot into the full audit phase Read TiVoWorthy TV everyday at JackMyerscomNext month the IAB will hold its first planned quotAudience Measurement Leadership Forumquot to explore the issues and engagement will be on the agenda Draizen saysEric Peterson can be reached via EricWebAnalyticsDemystifiedcomBill Gassman can be reached through the Gartner website at httpwwwgartnercomitaboutcontactgartnerjspDorian Benkoil a regular contributor to Jack Myers Media Business Report is a senior consultant for Teeming Media a digital media business consultancy He can be reached at DorianJackMyerscom

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE MYERS REPORT RESEARCH & WHITEPAPERS

Engagement Research: Will Online Media Succeed Where Others Haven't

Author

Publish date

Channel

Dorian Benkoil

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

More Videos:

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE MYERS REPORT RESEARCH & WHITEPAPERS

Engagement Research: Will Online Media Succeed Where Others Haven't

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Dorian Benkoil

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

The payment was successful

Cookies