Engaging Audiences

The latest research piece from Ipsos MediaCT looks at how measuring brand engagement can help build audiences and help to command premium prices for advertising.

What is engagement?

Engagement has been a buzzword in the media world for a number of years, and although most agree that engagement is positive for media brands, there is little agreement about what it comprises.

Ipsos MediaCT has extensive experience measuring and understanding media audiences and has worked towards developing their own approach to understanding how consumers engage with media brands.

Although there might not be one definition on what engagement is, there is agreement that there are three different types of engagement; brand engagement, behaviour engagement and advertising engagement.  It is the first of these that Ipsos MediaCT focussed on to understand how consumers engage with media brands,  what is important in media brand choice, what drives loyalty within the media sector and provides an overall score for media brand engagement that can be measured, compared and tracked over time.

Our approach

Ipsos MediaCT has self-funded two pilot studies to understand how consumers engage with media brands.  The study looked at television and online video in the UK and magazines and their online counterparts in the US.  Further steps include the study of the News genre in France across multiple platforms, after which the model will be refined and finalised.

Our approach is built on Ipsos’ hugely successful Equity*Builder and Loyalty Optimiser models to understanding brands, with modifications to take account of the eccentricities of media brands such as low switching costs, high use and loyalty and different approaches to price.  Over 20 regression analyses were conducted to identify four key pillars of engagement; need fulfilment, perception, equity and word of mouth.  Performance against these pillars can be measured by adding 13 statements to existing trackers or ad hoc studies.

Initial tests indicate that the engagement measures correlate strongly with satisfaction, propensity to pay, trust and recommendation measures – all ‘must-have’ for today’s media brands.

How can this help media owners?

This approach to understanding how consumers engage with media brands can help media owners to:

• Measure, track and compare engagement scores

• Identify key strengths and potential weaknesses, or areas for improvement

• And most importantly to highlight key and clearly defined areas, where actionable recommendations can be made, to help maximise audiences’ engagement with media brands.

In today’s dynamic, multi-platform media environment, this kind of engagement approach can also help media owners to understand how the brand portfolio is interacting and what sub-brands are adding to, or taking away from, the parent brand.

We believe that having an understanding of the level of engagement with media brands can help to build audience, increase audience retention, develop optimum and complementary positionings for brands and help to command premium prices for advertising.

Some key findings

This engagement study has provided a wealth of data and insight into the how audiences engage with media brands, such as:

Brands may fare equally well in terms of the overall level of engagement but this can be for a variety of reasons.  For example, engagement with YouTube is driven by the viral aspect of the brand, its relevance and the wide range of content available, whereas engagement with BBC iPlayer is driven by the quality, credibility and respect associated with the brand.

Different user profiles often have different perceptions and levels of engagement with brands.  For example, heavy users of Channel 4 are just as likely to view the brand as well respected and credible as lighter users but are more likely to see the brand as entertaining.  Insight such as this can help brands to target communications to attract lighter users or retain heavier users.

The nature of engagement may change according to the type of media.  For example, word of mouth is more important in driving engagement for online video providers compared to its importance for television brands.

Next Steps

We will continue to pilot the model and refine the measures to build the most effective measure of engagement.

Of course, media brand engagement is only one part of the puzzle, the real goal being to combine existing results with further research on both behavioural engagement and advertising engagement.  This will enable a full view of the engagement process, from choosing an individual brand, through to understanding how that brand is consumed and the resultant engagement with advertising.

We will also be examining assumptions commonly held about the nature of engagement, such as that the longer time spent with a brand, the more engaged a consumer is and that the higher the engagement when interacting with content, the higher the engagement with advertising within a brand.

For more information, email Sarah Gale or Beckie Matthews.