An Eye for an I: Engagement, Identity & The New Digital Deal

“Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context”

Advertising Research Foundation Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer

The term “engagement” as defined above by the MI4 has prompted a lot of conversation but is far from gaining universal acceptance in the realm of marketing communications . In fact, the definition’s simultaneous reductivism and seemingly purposeful obscurity suggests obstacles beyond semantics bar the way to an agreeable solution. The process of standardization is a challenging one, and the authors freely admit there is a lot of work yet to do . Given that lack of universal endorsement and little likelihood of an immediate definition and set of associated metrics, the terms “engagement” is likely to remain a controversial and hard fought subject. A reasonable question is, why?

First, there is real money involved. Depending upon how engagement is defined and subsequently agreed to be measured, it is likely to form the basis of media accountability within and across media for some time to come .

Second, the respective ability of different media to deliver engagement as it is ultimately defined will significantly determine the relative value of those media in the eyes of advertisers. Therefore the debate is not one of “academic” interest only, but instead a matter of critical competitive positioning within an increasingly chaotic marketspace. Media have been competing with one another to establish which among them is most capable of “engaging” the consumer for decades. What’s different is the pressure and competition coming from new media

Third, engagement is a flashpoint at the intersection of larger traditional and emergent media processes . Engagement’s measurability in traditional media is limited to a large extent by the constraints of the delivery channels of those traditional media, whereas interactive media is far less actually and theoretically constrained as to how data about the observable activities and interests of users can be gathered. As a result, the process of defining “engagement” takes place on the fault line between new and old media and even old and new concepts of “audience” “consumer”, “user” or “prospect”. The debate itself may be simply one of the louder creaking sounds at the collision point of tectonic plates.

Fourth, the determination as to how “engagement” is to be defined and measured can’t be made entirely absent consideration of the perspective underlying interests and increasing leverage of the “prospects (often also known as “people”) in question. The “audience” just isn’t a passive mass anymore, in fact, they/we are simultaneously the audience and its opposite, to the extent that they/we are becoming performers and producers in their/our right (even owners of their/our own rights), increasingly able to do some “turning on” and “turning off” of our own.

Fifth, and finally, the debate doesn’t stop at “engagement”, but instead, proceeds from and loops back to engagement, visiting other terms of multiple, debated definitions, including “attention” and “digital identity”. Engagement is getting a lot of attention, but attention may end up defining engagement, and identity certainly will also bear upon the assessment of attention and engagement. The “attention economy” and all its associated permutations, mechanisms and metrics, threatens to usurp the discussion of engagement, just as new media continues its onslaught on the customs, mechanisms and business models of traditional media .

So what’s to be done? What we seem to have now is at least a three way debate with high stakes, to be worked out in public among advertisers, media content providers/distributors and “prospects” (sometimes known as “people”) and their actual and purported advocates. Even were the business pressures not immense, the question of what constitutes engagement is not at all an easy problem. It becomes almost insoluble when there are interests to protect in the face of an unknown future.

Regardless of the vagaries of a media measurement standards process, the days of counting eyeballs are giving way to the task of considering, conversing with and engaging with actual individuals. In this dog-eat-dog world, it’s ‘an eye for an I’ both in the sense that the eye in question is of value only relative to what’s inside the head that holds it, and in the sense that we as individuals (eyeballs and all) will increasingly be trading information about our identities and signaling our intents in return for access to the media which we both consume and of which we are increasingly a part.

The stakes are high indeed. How the mechanisms of media measurement ultimately use attention data and identity data to ‘engage’ individuals within and across media, and what means are used to make such mechanisms accountable, will for better or worse play a large part in defining the conditions, rights and rewards of ‘digital citizenship’. Therein lies the basis of “the new digital deal”. Are we all paying attention, or might we later be paying a tension instead?