Entries from March 2008 ↓

On Thursday I had the pleasure of presenting NuConomy in the Under The Radar Conference (and may I add - we won both the Judges and audience awards).
After my pitch, Rafe Needlman (CNET) who moderated the event asked me a very interesting and important question: "Do I think that advertisers will start to use engagement as their buying currency?"

My answer was that I think it will happen eventually, but it will be a long process.
Coming back home, I thought that I gave just half the answer. The second half is all about why it is so important for the future of the web, that engagement will become the next currency for advertising.

Today most advertisers look on three metrics: Unique users, page impressions and time spent on site.
The number of unique users is no doubt very important and will stay like this. Let us focus on the two other metrics.
By measuring page impressions as a currency we basically encourage sites to create bad user experiences. You can argue that some sites use too much ajax today, but I believe we can all agree that page refreshes are simply bad thing. The best user experience comes from sites that use a smart combination of Flash and ajax. Instead of encouraging this, we actually punish those sites by paying them less money.
Same thing also for time spent on site. Again, we actually encourage sites to be slow. If the pages will take more time to load, if you will need to go through more steps to get what you want, if you won’t be able to get the data through RSS and other channels, you will spend more time on the site. Again, advertisers today encourage sites to develop bad user experience.

Measurement of engagement takes a different approach. In essence, it say that what’s important is not the quantity but the quality. By using engagement as currency, advertisers will say "We don’t want just a million people to watch our ads, we want the right people to watch and interact with our brand". Instead of paying for every joe that see or click on the ad, an advertiser will pay just for the audience he actually want to engage with.
If you advertise a sport product, you want to pay just for sports fans that interact with your brand and not for people who never watched a football game in their life. The more they are engaged in sport, you will probably be willing to pay more.

Using engagement as a currency, will not just encourage better user experience and adoption of new technologies, but will actually yield better ROI for the advertisers.

So if this such a great solution for everyone, why do I think it will be a long process until we will get there?
There are many reasons, but probably the number one reason is the fact that engagement is not a comparable metric. It’s easy to say that one site has more page views than the other. It’s much harder to say that one has a more engaged audience than the other.
We still don’t have any standards to how engagement should be measured. If you read this blog, you know that I believe that there is no just one engagement metric that fits all. Still, I do believe that we all can come up with different engagement standards for each vertical.
So we will have an engagement metric for blogging sites and another for video. Who should define them? It will probably be a joined effort of the community and the IAB. Yes, the world of engagement will be more difficult to navigate in but it is also the right way in order to take us to the next step in the evolution of the web.

The IAB were kind to invite us to do a panel together with Comscore about next generation metrics, in their Leadership Forum conference.
The conference takes place in Chicago this Wednesday. If you are near the area, please ping me back and maybe we can meet up for a drink…

I tend to watch most of my favorite TV shows on the web. Mainly because it’s much more convenient but also because it allows me to see how the different networks experiment with online video ads.

From all the networks I got to say that with no doubt ABC has the best experience. I would love to see their numbers and see if it also translate to better conversation for the advertisers.
It start with the fact that during each advertising break (there are a few of them, each one 30 seconds) instead of just having a video add, the video itself get smaller, and the advertiser gets a full interactive page to use when interacting with the users. Some advertisers like Epson used that to add dynamic navigation and information around the video.

Second of all, it’s the choice of ads.
I’ve been writing about this for a long time - what advertisers need to do is go back to the basics. Understand that the best ads are the ones than enhance the experience of the user instead of irritate him.
A great example is what ABC has done with their own ads. Instead of just show you a 30 seconds trailer for one of their TV series, they chose to show cool humorous interviews and behind the scenes footage of the series. This is great thinking. This is content that people actually like to watch. I found myself sometimes don’t even notice that the 30 seconds have gone and that I can click to continue watch the the show. I actually wanted to keep watching the ad.

Going forward with this concept of more interactive page and cool ads can bring us to some really cool (and crazy :)) ideas.
For example: Why not broadcast the episode live on a specific time (even during the TV broadcast) and let people chat with each one, or write to an interactive message board while they watch the ad?
Why not put an interactive sign for a coupon which you can add to your favorites for later use with one click?
Why not do a one question survey about your product while you show the video ad?

If you want to capture your audience, you need to understand that it is all about the experience.