While the digital advertising environment provides a wealth of opportunities for exposure, advertisers who hope to engage broad targets with their messages should not look to digital as a solution, at least not as a primary campaign medium.
In fact, exposure opportunities in the digital space have a very low likelihood of translating into actual consumer engagement. More than most advertisers realize, digital is a medium in which the creative itself is key to the success of the media buy. Engagement with the Internet is very active, particularly as compared to the more ‘passive’ involvement with traditional TV. When online, consumers choose which of the multiple visuals on their screen to look at or ignore. As a result, most digital ads are not even noticed, hence the term ‘banner blindness’.
How do you engage consumers with digital ads? The most effective strategy to improve the odds of engaging your target consumer with your digital ads is to utilize a highly integrated campaign across media. If consumers have seen campaign elements elsewhere (e.g., TV or print), and have been rewarded in terms of entertainment or relevant news, they are more likely to take notice of your digital execution. So, make sure you’re executions are well integrated with the more broad-based campaign elements. Secondly, keep it simple! Just because digitally you can create complex stories, multi-level games, and viewer involvement, doesn’t mean that you should! Digital ads are generally most effective if viewer involvement is not required. However, if you cannot resist the urge to engage the viewer on multiple levels, design your campaign so that those who choose a lower-involvement experience can gain meaningful communication from your ad, no matter when they glance at it.
Our research has also found that because digital is a ‘lean forward’ medium – more reliant on conscious choices about what to pay attention to – it provides an excellent opportunity to strengthen brand affinity among existing brand fans. Additionally, using digital ads to provide reasons for fans to engage with the brand via Facebook and other social media can generate a strong amplifying effect for your overall campaign.
Are you successfully integrating your digital initiatives with your broad-based offline ad campaigns? Or are there strategic or organizational reasons to optimize within, versus across, media venues? We’d be interested to hear about your experience in the comments.
