New York, NY (February 28, 2006)—Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) has released Engagement: Understanding Consumers Relationships with Media, a resource that addresses how consumers connect with advertising-supported media: television, newspapers, radio, the Internet and magazines.  The guide, the first of its kind on the topic, features 35 representative third-party research studies that reveal insights into the many facets of engagement. 

Given advertisers increasing focus on engagement as a key contributor to ROI, we developed this guide to further the media and ad communities understanding of this multi-dimensional and extremely complex subject, stated Ellen Oppenheim, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, MPA.

The guides analyses of dozens of media studies around engagement bring forward the following conclusions:

         Engagement is complexa variety of exposure and relationship factors affect engagement, making simplified rankings of those factors misleading.

         Engagement with a medium often differs from engagement with its advertising.

         Targeting and relevance are important to considerthe fit among consumers, the advertising message, and the equities of the brand and the medium, all affect engagement.

         Engagement factors vary by demographic and product category segment, by medium and by genres within media.

         Higher levels of consumer engagement appear to correlate with stronger advertising results.

The future of engagement research is also addressed in the guide.  Evolution of the research will address factors such as expanding to cross-media synergies, using engagement to improve advertising creative, linking engagement to accountability, and more. 

Kudos to MPA for pulling together current research on how people use a wide range of major media and engage with advertising.  We must begin to study opportunity to buy as well as collecting research on opportunity to see in order to improve the effectiveness of advertising.  The need to understand and measure engagement is our number one challenge today, noted Joseph Plummer, Chief Research Officer, Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).  The ARF and the American Association of Advertising Agencies are currently working on finding out how to define engagement, and ultimately measure it across media, in a project called Measurement Initiative: Advertisers, Agencies, Media and Researchers, or MI4.

MPAs guide will be distributed to thousands of media and advertising professionals over the course of the year. It will debut at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) Media Conference & Tradeshow in March, and will be available at various 2006 Magazine Days across the country, at the AAAA Management Conference in April, at the Association of National Advertisers media conference in June, and at all MPA seminars and conferences.  The guide, which will also be mailed to ad agencies and client companies, will be polybagged with the April 3, 2006 issue of Advertising Age, reaching 20,000 advertisers and agencies nationwide.

A PDF of Engagement: Understanding Consumers Relationship with Media can be downloaded from MPAs website at www.magazine.org/engagementguide.  It is a companion piece to Accountability: A Guide to Measuring ROI and ROO Across Media, published by MPA in October 2005.