• by Kevin Mannion , September 25, 2008

The interactive dimension of the Web continues to deepen and broaden.  Social media, professional communities, user-generated content, games, widgets, video -- all attest to richer levels of audience engagement. How do publishers make the most of this heightened interactivity? 

Some publishers are already telling some rather sophisticated engagement stories and realizing great returns on their investment in audience insight. But first let's take a step back and recognize the imperative to understand audience engagement and frame it in a way that resonates with marketers.

Engagement Is A Story, Not A Metric

We still need to be clear by what we mean by engagement. Previously, I alluded to the excellent distinctions offered by Gary Angel and Eric Peterson among three types of engagement: visitor, audience and brand. Essentially, visitor engagement has to do with understanding what users are doing on your site; audience, how you can use that intelligence to enable advertisers to succeed; and brand, how customers develop a relationship with a specific brand.  So when we hear someone speak of engagement, it is very useful to know which mode they are in.  For our purposes, we are speaking of audience engagement, which has obvious reference points with visitor (analytics) and brand (conversion and ROI metrics) engagement.

Audience engagement is a story, not a metric. We cannot look at a single metric or even a set of metrics and help advertisers know how to best advertise on our sites.  Metrics play an undeniably central role in getting your site on a media plan. Advertisers look for reach and composition at various metrics that you supply in a spreadsheet. Once you are on the plan, though, it is your understanding of your audience that can really enable an advertiser to get the greatest return on investment, and for you to realize highly profitable revenues.

But don't get me wrong; metrics are indispensable to the story. The key: metrics can help you understand your own site engagement story. So let me return to the Peterson Model. Eric Peterson has understood that engagement is not a simple metric, such as duration or page views. What can such a metric tell you about what your audience is doing on your site and why your site is valuable to them? And by extension, what can you tell advertisers about how they can succeed, based on the fact that your average user spends four or 40 minutes on your site? Instead, the Peterson Model looks at indices, which give the metrics context.

For example, you can look at a community site and score interactivity, instead of page views.  Doesn't a widget on Facebook that becomes highly viral lend itself to an engagement story that clicks and page views don't capture? Instead the Peterson Model may bring the following indices into the story:

·        Downloads: how many people downloaded a widget, called, for example, the "Parking Wars Game"?

·        Interactivity: how many times the audience accessed the widget?

·        Duration: time spent on the game, in comparison with other widgets, perhaps?

·        Feedback: How many comments were posted?

These kinds of metrics can then become the plot lines of a compelling engagement story. But what would that story look like?

Here, you would need the widget metrics. But you would also need some intelligence. You need to understand your audience well enough to move from metrics to indices to a story that connects with another type of engagement -- the one that matters the most to marketers: the brand engagement story. Some key points to keep in mind:

1.      What is the epiphany of your story?

Your audience engagement story needs to accomplish one thing: It needs to result in a big "Aha!" that shows your marketing or agency partner how to succeed with your audience.  Essentially, it has to culminate in actionable insights for your advertisers. Examples of these can include:

·        A clearer idea of the competitive landscape

·        The awareness, interest, and consideration levels for your clients' products

·        The kinds of activities on your site that map to the sales and marketing funnel (Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Purchase decision)

·        The types of interactive ad units that succeed at key user moments

·        Where and when it is most effective to offer sponsored tools, widgets, downloadable documentation

2.      What is the Plot?

A compelling story is more than just a record of events. The plot enables the author to shape a story to emphasize what is significant and connected to the main point or climax of the tale. In the same way, metrics alone can never tell your engagement story. Intelligence and understanding need to guide the framework of those metrics.  A metric might tell the Democratic National Committee that the number of visitors to the election pages of CNN during the Republican Convention was slightly lower than during the Democratic Convention. A compelling story might be that the audience for the Republicans doubled among independent women voters and that a high percentage of them appeared via a search for "Sarah Palin."

3.      Bring your Characters to life

Who is your audience? How can you bring some dimension to what makes them tick, what they care about, and why they are important?  I would advise taking a couple of related approaches to gathering these essential insights:

·        Visit Quantcast and look at the kinds of information that "Quantified" sites can offer about who visits their sites. In my consulting work with the company, I know that Web publishers are enabling advertisers to understand better the demographics, business and lifestyle profiles of their audiences. See the wealth of audience info under Bloomberg's Quantified Profile, for example.

·        Take Avinash Kaushik's simple advice and ask your visitors in an unobtrusive pop up survey some basic questions about what they are doing on your site and how your site is helping them accomplish their goals.

·        Talk to them. There are many great ways to identify representative visitors who can offer you a gold mine of intelligence about your site, your clients' brands, and the best ways for your advertiser to win their minds and hearts.

Which companies that are telling "Audience Engagement" stories that connect the dots between the "Visitor Engagement" on their own site and the "Brand Engagement" goals of the advertiser on their own site? I'd love to hear from you on that. Meanwhile, I do have a stellar case study to share -- next time on MediaPost.  Till then, stay engaged.