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Can Engagement Really Become the New Standard?

Started by Nick O'Neill · 10 months ago

If you’ve gone to any of the industry conferences in the past year, you’ll have heard the same pitch from all the companies: “We’re selling engagement.” We understand that there is inherently value to brands when consumers engage in va ... Continue reading »

5 comments

  • Dan Neely

    10 months ago

    Engagement is a hard item to track... and I agree it is all about the conversation. The problem with the conversation trackers (buzz trackers) is that they are following frequency of mention not engagement. Frequency of mentions really are the loudest person in the room the problem is compounded by the speed at which User Generated Content is being created, more UGC will be created in the next two years than all content that has ever existed. I see engagement measurement being made up of two elements, interactions (we used to call this the click stream, but now it is broader because social is no longer about walled gardens) and influence....how influential is the person performing those interactions. There is little doubt that engagement makes sense for measuring social interactions and will become the new measure... it will take one major advertiser to switch to that metric...getting that one major advertiser will require more than traditional metrics...it will require customer intelligence
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  • Ted Rheingold

    10 months ago

    Another good point.

    Not one of the advertising agencies we have sold brand campaigns to in the last year have any idea what 'engagement metrics' are or why web folks are promoting them. Most every ad agency in the U.S. and Europe are still 100% attached to impressions and clicks. They are becoming less scared of non-traditional clicks (such as contests, Groups, virtual gifts, etc.) but that's only because they can still tie it to a user and a click.

    I'm concerned that many web2 publisher models will fail because the ad industry isn't nearly as excited about engagement metrics as it's proponents are. Very few people in ad agencies are risk takers. Very few brands they represent are risk takers. Furthermore, ad agencies are very quick to pull the plug on anything they perceive is under performing. So though they may try out new methods, if they are not getting better reported results than highway billboards or all their other existing opportunities, they'll advise their teams to never do it again.

    This is not to say the best companies won't (or aren't already) making advertisers very happy with non-traditional methods, but those are and will be the special companies with great sales teams and commitment to being an ad publisher. And I find most web companies are much more focused on their technology than being in the ad business.
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  • Gerd Leonhard

    10 months ago

    Very interesting post. I love the "Engagement Advertising as the 4th Type of Web Based Ad" !
    You and your readers guys may also enjoy a recent presentation I published on "Social Media Futures", here : http://www.mediafuturist.com/2008/07/the-future...
    reply
  • lhaus

    10 months ago

    It's the right question to be asking. Have you spoken to Insight Express or Dynamic Logic to see whether they are looking to correlate the kind of activity with traditional brand awareness and attitudinal metrics?
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  • Nick O'Neill

    10 months ago

    Hi Liza,

    No I haven't but I definitely will look into that!
    reply

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