More than one third of European internet advertisers are planning to create social networking profiles in the year ahead among various ‘engagement tactics’.
However, just 24pc internet advertisers using various engagement tactics actually measure whether users interact with their online ads.
A new report from JupiterResearch finds that more than half of European online advertisers used tactics intended to increase user interaction, or ‘engagement’, in the past year.
Nearly two thirds of online advertisers will use engagement tactics in the next year.
Although viral marketing campaigns will remain the most popular form of engagement marketing, advertisers’ use of tactics that engage users more deeply – such as profiles on social networking sites and ads that encourage users to contribute photos and videos to advertisers’ websites – will grow relatively more quickly.
“With the large majority of European online advertisers planning to use engagement marketing tactics in the next year, it’s vital that the industry finds ways to cheaply and accurately measure the impact of these campaigns,” said Nate Elliott, senior analyst at JupiterResearch and lead author of the report.
Elliott said that as it stands, most European advertisers are jumping on the engagement marketing bandwagon without truly understanding which tactics represent the most appropriate and effective use of their marketing resources.
“As marketers increasingly try to reach consumers through social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion, they should turn to their online ad agencies for help with gauging the success of these efforts,” said David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch.
“In turn, agencies and ad servers must develop benchmarks and proxies to discover and prove the relationship between technology-based measurements and traditional brand impact surveys,” Schatsky added.
By John Kennedy
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