Start Measuring Audience Engagement

Avenue A Razorfish has issued its third annual Digital Outlook report, for 2007 (PDF), which I found courtesy of the Guy Kawasaki blog.   

One of the points it covers very well is the notion that new channels that consumers (and of course, business owners) use, have to be evaluated using different measurements.  One new measurement is “engagement.”

Basically, the concept of engagement goes like this:  in the past, in the age of broadcasting, you were more concerned with how many people you reached, no matter how briefly and how intrusively you reached them. Today, with so many alternative media sources and so many ways for people to consume media, you should also be concerned with depth rather than solely with breadth and raw numbers.

The paper notes on page 20:

While channels like mobile, podcasting, and VOD may not have achieved critical mass when compared with wider reach channels such as television, the audiences who are using them now can be valuable to connect with on their own terms. Instead of dismissing one of these channels based on lack of total scale, consider the value of reaching a smaller sliver of your target on a new channel and in a different way. The thinking here roughly goes, “Only 10% of my target is using the channel,” to which this recalibration of audience and scale methodology would reply, “Yes, but reaching that 10% on the channel they like, when and where they want to hear from you, may be more valuable that reaching the other 90% in a way they find intrusive and irrelevant.”

This has less to do with scale, and more to do with depth, which may be a newer, more valuable way of evaluating reach in emerging channels. * * * Many emerging media venues share the characteristic of being user chosen, and authority shifted, both of which typically indicate self-selecting consumers who are actively engaging with media and messaging. Consider that while the scale of audiences for VOD is nowhere near that of TV, that sliver of users is more engaged, is more actively pursuing information, and has the potential to become more deeply involved with media provided to them in that manner. Ten thousand deeply engaged brand loyalists are worth as much or more than 100,000 people with only a passing awareness of the brand and its value. This approach does not mean the two (mass scale and niche depth scale) are mutually exclusive, but rather that when combined they begin to truly capitalize on the opportunities afforded by emerging channels.

The above explanation is the best one I’ve seen for why you should at least consider podcasting, for instance, for reaching some portion of your small business audience.

While you may be reaching only a percentage of business owners, you are reaching them in a way they WANT to be reached. You’re touching people who are going to be receptive to your message, because they have to actively choose to download the recording to their iPods and consume your message later.

You can’t get much more engaged than that.