Measuring Engagement

The iMedia Summit (sigh - there are SO many things happening this month. Dear Students, please make life interesting for me here at school so I am not tempted to regret missing the Summit or AdWeek or DC AdWeek or MIXX) is in progress and yesterday iMedia Connection offered an overview on exploding myths in the industry.

Lots of myths were challenged but one that caught my eye is on the issue of measuring engagement.

It seems everyone agrees these days that brands must engage consumers and interactive marketing is a tool for engagement. Planning up engaging antics is surely great fun (like building interactive displays in Second Life or tweeting in character), but how do we know if we are actually accomplishing anything?

Some have suggested that engagement is THE metric. Others say engagement should be one of many key performance indicators marketers use to assess the effectiveness of their promotional strategies. Once upon a time, someone really smart said - "if it ain't measured, it ain't managed." In other words, if we aren't measuring, it's not really important - it isn't strategic, and it certainly can't be controlled, improved, or utilised properly.

The real issue here is not which measure - but how to measure. First, any campaign should plan for measurement up front. Second, as an industry, we need to come to define some key performance indicators that can be used for brand engagement devices. Some starters (see Advertising 2.0 for more): 1) return on impressions model, 2) return on media impact model, 3) return on target influence model, and a 4) return on earned media model.