Marketers value engagement with their content marketing efforts, because it indicates that people actually care enough to interact. However, according to a recent eMarketer report, while engagement is compelling, 10 marketers might define it in 10 different ways.
As the interactive ad format that most attracts brand marketers, much is riding on internet video advertising -- mainly their marketing budget ROI. But are consumers really paying attention to online video ads, when most say they avoid or ignore them on broadcast television channels?
As spending for online video rises and takes a bigger slice of the display ad pie, marketers must be confident that they are spending wisely. Engagement may be difficult to quantify abstractly, but is key to the worth of video advertising.
"All effective advertising today -- not just video -- requires some degree of audience engagement," said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst. "However, unlike some metrics that provide real-time insight into advert performance, much audience engagement does not happen in the moment with the ad. Nor can it be measured automatically. Instead, it's a process over time."
The most likely campaign objective for online video advertising is brand awareness, a baseline component of engagement, according to advertisers and agencies surveyed by Tremor Media and DM2PRO. Close behind brand awareness is brand engagement itself.
For video ads, marketers use various concepts to identify engagement -- including server- and survey-based metrics, traditional brand health metrics, social video-sharing, interaction rates and more.
They can use several strategies to increase or influence engagement -- such as which websites to advertise on, how to target campaigns, and the length or creative of marketing videos.
"Before deciding which types of engagement to focus on, marketers first should examine what they want to achieve for their brand, who might best respond to their message and how comfortable they are with relaxing control over the ways consumers relate to their brand," said Hallerman.
Perhaps the more important question to ask; knowing the outcome from prior advertising efforts, isn't there a more effective use of your limited marketing budget?