Gasta Advertising:The new fundamentals of digital engagement

Long, long ago, way back in 2005, engagement was the cause du jour of mediaologists and media metricians.

Enthusiasm for the concept was so great that, for a brief period, agency and marketing personnel had "engagement" added to their titles: Chief Engagement Officer became the new meaning of "CEO."

By April 2006, the Advertising Research Foundation issued its official definition of engagement -- "Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."

Find that definition unsatisfying? You are called legion, for you are many.

Since then, agencies, advertisers, and research companies have taken stabs at just how to measure engagement.

A new book published this year attempts to lay out not just a definition of engagement as it pertains to the digital space, but how to accomplish it. Written by Leland Harden and Bob Heyman, two of the earliest pioneers in the online advertising space, "Digital Engagement" could be seen as a follow-up and update to their book "Net Results.2," which itself was an update of "Net Results: Web Marketing that Works" -- a book I look to as being the first real textbook on web marketing.

To call "Digital Engagement" a follow-up, however, would be unfair. Instead, it's a whole new "how-to" playbook for planning and measuring online advertising. It also expands its scope, looking beyond banners, keywords, and websites to include examples of virality, mobile marketing, PR, blogging, widgets, social media, affiliate marketing, and more.

In this book, Harden and Heyman are not articulating the principles of what motivates behavior (like Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology") or exploring the philosophy of media and culture (Theodor Adorno's "Culture Industry"). These guys want you to know what others have done, what the outcome was, and how you might go about doing it yourself.

The book is replete with case studies for each tactic they cover. For example, what are the things to consider when optimizing your website?

First, you get a rule: If your site launched more than a year ago, it's time to dust it off and give it a work-over. It might need a lot, it might only need a little. But to find out, read on.

Harden and Heyman give us a list of some analytics tools that make your site optimization job easier. Then there is a list of best practices. Then questions to ask yourself at the outset -- answers that will determine which of those practices are best for you. After that, they provide tactics for communicating with your marketplace about your changes.

Throughout the book are brief descriptions of what some companies are doing with their sites -- good or bad -- and finally, a brief case study (the chapter about making over your site is a case study for Tommy Hilfiger).

The best thing about the book is that there are so many examples of what companies are doing with the full range of digital tools and tactics available to them.

Some of the play-by-play can seem rudimentary at times. The brief review on why online video is important, or the examples of what online video might cost, seem more relevant to an audience reading two or three years ago. But a list of video-sharing sites is a welcome quick review resource. Or a proposed formula for measuring success from TubeMogul, the online video analytics and distribution company, will appeal to quants who are looking for a way to prove the effectiveness of a video campaign.

As a media nerd, something that stood out most was the formula for calculating a total engagement index (TEI), contributed by Eric Peterson of WebAnalyticsDemystified.com. There may be other variables for defining and determining engagement, but this is the first time I've seen anyone use something beyond just, say, time spent, as a method for articulating engagement.

Click depth x Loyalty x Recency x Duration x Interactivity x Subscription / 6 = TEI.

All of these variables have to be assigned by whomever is doing the measuring, which means that the formula can mean whatever you want it to mean. And that means that engagement remains an amorphous designation. But at least it is an attempt at definition and determination that no one else is offering.

Harden and Heyman are offering this and other things they've found in their examination of today's practice of the online advertising discipline.

At the outset, the book participates in some of the usual "traditional-media-is-doomed" predictions common among the digerati's more zealous advocates ("newspapers, magazines, and television went down in flames in 2007").

The biggest problem with books like this, however, is the same thing that afflicts all bound volumes dealing with digital media, marketing, trends, culture, and the rest as their subjects: By the time the information is recorded, edited, re-edited, printed, and bound, the world the text reflects has changed. Certain companies called out as either examples or resources will no longer exist; forecasts for spending or usage are outdated almost as soon as they are released.

But the fundamentals of "how-to" and "what-to-do" put forth in "Digital Engagement" should hold steady long enough to make the book a good guide for the digital marketer starting out today or wishing to make the change from just buying banners and keywords (though there are good suggestions for doing both).

You don't have to read it straight through. The chapters are clearly listed by tactic ("Search Engine Marketing," "Public Relations 2.0"). Go straight to the chapter relevant to what you are considering and review it.

At the beginning of "Ogilvy on Advertising" (still the greatest advertising book ever written), David Ogilvy quotes: "When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip.'"

What this means is that it doesn't matter how much you like the advertising, what matters is that you buy the product. "Digital Engagement" is an excellent lesson plan for getting that done using digital and emerging media.
By Jim Meskauskas
March 31, 2009