The rules of engagement

By Phang Chee Leong, CEO, Innity

It’s no secret that the internet penetration worldwide has been increasing multifold year on year. According to the World Internet Usage Statistics, there are nearly 2 billion internet users worldwide out of which 825 million users are from the Asian region constituting the largest percentage of users globally. As a result, more and more companies are shifting their advertising efforts online. However, determining how successful these ad campaigns are is no longer an easy task for marketers.

Studies show that people retain only 10% of the information they read, 20% of the information they hear, but 50% of the information they see and hear. Consequently, marketers have turned to rich media to interest their audience. Rich media refers to the use of multimedia or interactivity to provide users with an enhanced web experience. In advertising, rich media is used to attract attention, create a buzz, stand out amongst millions of ads and to appeal to individuals who completely ignore banner ads. The benefits of using rich media ads are immense – rich media ads can communicate more information and are powerful, entertaining and effective, ads using rich media can deliver more detailed instant feedback to the advertiser moving beyond the click, these ads enable higher brand recognition and they are more likely to be clicked on as they catch people’s attention immediately and they are able to evoke an emotional response just like TV ads are able to.

Rich media makes sense when the incremental cost of media and production is less than the product of the increment of creative performance and the level of exposure. However, some rich media technologies do not have fully developed measurement capabilities yet that yield performance information on par with other online advertising. Additionally, many advertisers fail to start off a rich media campaign with useful and measurable performance metrics in mind. Often, conducting the campaign is an objective in itself only leading to a lot of effort with few visible results. And these campaigns are often abandoned after the first media spend. In this case, it will be impossible for this formula to work.

The solution to this problem is using the effective payment mechanism better known as CPE or Cost Per Engagement. CPE is an advertising model wherein advertisers only pay for engagements generated by visitors from your site. These features include advertising games, videos, rolling over an ad for more information or even social sharing. Unlike the traditional cost-per-impression (CPM) method, which lacks accountability and places a high amount of risk onto the advertiser to figure out the success of the ad, an effective model provides an advertiser with an exceptional, measurable approach to advertising coupled with the CPE pricing model. This model helps to ensure accountability, provides unmatched insight into ad effectiveness, and guarantees ad spend success. Advertisers only need to pay when a consumer engages with the content related to their brand thus providing a risk free means to delivering highly targeted rich media content.

As an advertiser, it is important to keep in mind that the key to an ad campaign is engagement. Online engagement should typically be measured by interaction. Interaction, of any form, is not a passive activity and therefore holds a much bigger chance of the individual making a purchase or at least being able to recall the brand or product at a later date and ultimately being driven to a sale at that point in time. Whether it is watching a video, playing a game, reading some information on your phone, downloading a newsletter or signing up for an event – all interactions are far more significant than just passive consumption.