Viewability vs Engagement: Advertising’s New Measure Of Accountability

Viewability has always been a standard of the advertising world. In this digital era, Engagement must become our new measure of success. Moving past who ‘sees’ and focusing on who actually interacts with your brand.

Viewability has always been a standard of the advertising world. Who is going to see the ad? How many people will see the ad? ‘See’ being the main objective. When digital heralded a new age of measurability and, we thought, accountability, there again was viewability as the central concern for the majority of advertisers.

Yet in the last ten years we have found ourselves in a conundrum, technology is irreversibly changing the way in which we consume content and communicate. As people grow increasingly immune to what they ‘see’, advertisers come up with disease-like terms such as ‘banner blindness’, perhaps in an ill-devised hope that we can ‘cure’ behaviour.

Even if audiences see digital ads, and give them their full attention (now we are talking ‘big IF’), the effect is very different to the effect traditional mediums like print and TV have on passive ready-made viewers. For the most part, people think digital advertising is annoying, not because it isn’t creative or even relevant, but because it is forced upon us in online environments which we intrinsically associate with ‘choice’ (a mere 16% watch to the end of a mobile video ad according to the MMA).

Instead of addressing consumer behaviour in new media, the industry is ‘solving’ the problem by coming up with ever more confusing definitions for viewability, to justify ad spend. When is an ad ‘viewable’? What does it mean to ‘view’ an ad? Facebook deem an autoplayed video ad seen for 3 seconds as a view and charge accordingly.  Is this really money well spent?

But there is some glimmer of hope. Forward looking brands are starting to understand that there is a big difference between disliking online ads and disliking the brand. Users don’t dislike brands, they just hate being talked at, interrupted and forced to ‘see’. They want to be given a choice, to be part of the conversation. We are slowly moving away from communicating to people one way, and beginning to connect with consumers. The new measure of success is engagement.

Today’s teenagers make up the first generation that was born holding a touch-screen super computer, aka a smartphone. Generation Z is quite the opposite of stone-faced zombies, they are the kids growing up hyperconnected, empowered, incredibly engaged and, most importantly, marketing-literate. If brands want to remain relevant in the future, they must start measuring their success with metrics that make sense and mean something.

This approach removes all doubt around accountability. Engagement commands a premium but a well-justified one. Advertisers would be sure that, not only has their brand been seen but more significantlyinteracted with, and in the case of smartphones and tablets know that people have physically touchedtheir brand. Furthermore, it would be in publishers best interests to ensure the ad placements are hyper-targeted and relevant so as to maximize conversion from ‘views’ to engagement and minimize inventory required.

Engagement should be our new objective. A passing glance should no longer be enough. We must push ourselves to have consumers interact, touch, feel, feedback, converse, enjoy and ultimately connect at a deep level. As technology advances into new mediums – smarter mobile, wearables, the internet of things, augmented reality, virtual reality – the economy of choice will further cement itself. Brands that acknowledge this now will be those we will all be aspiring to emulate in the next ten years.

This article was first published in Brand Quarterly (22.Jul.2015).

 

Stephen Molloy

Managing partner. Investor. Blockchain and digital asset specialist.

9y

Some beach reading perhaps this summer cheers Shann, must challenge banner blindness then? There are ways of engaging, or having direct conversation as you put it, at large scale. Add that if you have people's absolute attention you only need to have the conversation/interaction once to register/land the message, and you remove the need to keep repeating yourself with high frequency. Let's take this offline this could take some time...

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Shann Biglione

SVP | Reputation and Risk Intelligence, AI, Corporate Strategy

9y

Cheers Stephen. Well engagement is not about registering. If you only account for people who engage, 99.x% of your advertising is useless. Advertising does not need to engage to be effective (unless your sole objective is a direct conversion). As a matter of fact, advertising designed to work without engagement is mathematically more impactful since it works for many more people. Engagement is at best a proxy metric, but still you need to be able to quantify the real reach (ie visible) to estimate its performance. Side note, I'm reading Subconscious at the moment, it's a really interesting read on how our brain processes advertising we do not consciously register. I'm not sure the research is perfect, but some of the findings definitely challenge common sense. Take care!

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Stephen Molloy

Managing partner. Investor. Blockchain and digital asset specialist.

9y

Good to hear from you, I don't think we're in total disagreement here Shann. 100% viewability should be the norm, you wouldn't accept not getting what you thought you had paid for in any other situation. But even given 100% viewability you still have no assurance your ad has actually been seen, never mind registered, and that's why I firmly believe in engagement. Remove all doubt, watch it resonate and be sure of landing your message. Visibility as you say is important only if you can understand exactly how much of it has actually been actually seen? What's not to love Shann?

Shann Biglione

SVP | Reputation and Risk Intelligence, AI, Corporate Strategy

9y

Ken. On 1/ of course they do, it's also something that has been a concerned for very long. Difference is the number of people who do not see a TV ad is a lot smaller than digital ones (display particularly), because people in digital just had the wishful thinking that it was not a key probelm, when it is. Many digital campaigns fail because of this. On 2/ don't confuse reach with blanket bombarding. Reach matters enormously. Disputing this is not forward thinking, it's simply delusional if you work in advertising and the reason we're in the current mess. I will find you plenty of niche products that seemingly don't need it. But this is usually because they don't need to reach many people (yet) in order to grow. If you increase your reach, you are more likely to increase your engagement - arithmetics really. Reach is def not the only solution to a brand's problem, but it's a crucial dimension. (If you send me your email I'm happy to send you more data on this.)

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