What Does Engagement Look Like in an Immersive World?

If you start talking to Marketers about ROI, it’s a safe bet that one of the words you will hear is “engagement.” Marketers will discuss how engaged their target market was in their campaign. They will talk about what they did to increase engagement. 

Engagement is one of the greatest potential benefits of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for Advertisers and branded content creators. Once a consumer target opts in, they are, by definition, engaged in a brand experience.

The Definition

But what does “engagement” really mean?

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees how to define it, especially across platforms. Most discussion around engagement relates to social media. Some Marketers think it's a click on an ad or the opening of an email. It could be retweeting a post, or it is strictly when an activation leads to a purchase. Others believe it’s more about a meaningful emotional connection.

It’s probably somewhere in the middle.

Engagement is about interacting with branded or advertising content, regardless of platform, in a way that feels meaningful to the target user.

Why Does It Matter?

It’s generally believed that brand engagement connects to ROI. These interactions begin a relationship between a brand and consumer that is correlated with purchase behavior.

By using the term, Marketers can talk about what they want their target to do and how it’s going to bring value to them. It often leads to the discussion of "repeat brand engagement" and how to differentiate your brand within the “Engagement Economy.”

An XR Call to Action

XR delivers highly engaged experiences. VR, in particular, brings full engagement as users are occluded from any other experience after all. AR isn’t too shabby either, as some suggest that it “delivers instant inspiration to increase brand engagement.”

A vague definition of “engagement” isn’t going to cut it for Marketers - especially as immersive advertising and branded content become more prevalent. Marketers need to create a more common definition to compare across media and agree on how to measure it. It could be length of tune/use, interactions/minute, in app sales, and/or brand affinity before and after use.

Once we can define engagement across media, then we can see the super-power of VR/AR/MR technologies in action. How could you even compare a social media share or the opening of an email with a 10 minute branded VR experience? You can't - without a common cross-platform language. XR will have a HUGE advantage, if only we all agree on the measurement tools. And, then Marketers, like myself, can continue to (over)use the word “engagement” knowing exactly what we mean...