In A Fragmented World, Engagement Is King

Media executives from Australia’s top agencies sat down with B&T TV to discuss how media fragmentation is impacting advertising spend.

Few will deny that measurement is key when it comes to deciding where to allocate ad dollars. With media more fragmented than ever, which metrics to use is less clear.

As Nik Doble, Mindshare’s national head of investment, points out, agencies must be “mindful of how diverse and fragmented the landscape has become in recent years. There is lots of new technology, lots of new platforms, and lots of new opportunities.”

This fragmentation means clients are increasingly questioning what different mediums can offer. Raj Gupta, chief strategy and growth officer at UM Australia, said:

“When I first started in media, our key measurement metric was reach – the rate was decided from an exposure point of view. But clients are now starting to realise that not all reach is created equal,” he said.

“The value of exposure within your social stream is not the same as me sitting in front of a screen at a cinema.”

With reach alone becoming increasingly questioned, impacting and influencing minds is becoming the new gold.

“The biggest thing is the ability to encode memories for my clients,” Gupta said. “From a client point of view, I’m trying to do one of two things. I’m either trying to encode something in someone and create awareness of a brand or I’m trying to create attributes around that brand.”

Engagement is becoming seen as a key metric behind an advertiser’s ability to influence the minds of their audience. And what drives consumer engagement of an ad is whether they feel it is relevant to them, or whether they feel they are being disrupted by it.

Research conducted by Think News Brands shows that this varies wildly based on the advertising medium an ad sits in.

According to the research, ads in cinema, podcasts and total news publishing are perceived as the least disruptive and most relevant, and therefore the most engaging. By contrast, ads on social media, search, radio and non-news websites are seen as more disruptive and also less relevant, leading to a “less engaged” effect.

Total TV fell bottom of the barrel with people perceiving ads in this medium as the most disruptive and least relevant, leading to a “bothered effect” with ads in this environment.

It is little surprise, therefore, that advertisers and agencies are increasingly choosing news publishing to deliver engaging, contextually relevant messages to improve their campaign ROI and outcomes..

When The Media Store was tasked with launching a new wagering brand into the Australian market they “over-invested a lot in news” said Jacquie Alley, chief operating officer.

“It was incredibly successful for us, particularly within those sporting and contextually relevant environments”.

OMD’s co-CEO Sian Whitnall concurred that placing a campaign within news can deliver “off-the-charts engagement” when the aims of the ad align with the aims of the platform.

“We’ve had many successes because the readers want to engage with a certain topic and we just happen to have a brand that would work really nicely.”

“Cost of living is another great example of that. For example, News Corp has done some great initiatives around the cost of living and helping to make the Aussie dollar go further.”

“Luckily we work with brands that have wanted to be able to get in there and support.”

With more content available than ever, engagement is the new reach. And when it comes to achieving engagement, you won’t do much better than news publishing.

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