THE EPHRON LETTER MAY 2006 1

ERWIN EPHRON WWW.EPHRONONMEDIA.COM

PREVENTING DIS-ENGAGEMENT
Isnt the Obvious Problem Too Many Commercials?
___________________
Desperate times bring desperate
measures. Royal Philips Electronics
recently patented a device that would
force viewers to watch commercials by
locking the channel when ads run.
That got me thinking. Does it have an
eye lock also? And will they sell it as
engagement TV?
The Philips announcement is a different way of thinking about
engagement that we tend to overlook. Not how to engage
consumers, but how to not dis-engage them. This idea seems so
obvious I wonder how it has eluded us.
The familiar TV advertising model is programs attract viewers who
are delivered to the advertising. In this construction there is media
engagement which is captured by measures of audience size,
composition and loyalty. We call them ratings data. Then there is
advertising engagement, defined by measures of recall, persuasion
and intent to purchase as delivered by copy testing. These are two
kinds of engagement. And we have useful measures for each.
RESEARCH IS DRY. NOT JUICY
But this is a very dry definition of engagement which leaves hot-
blooded advertisers cold. The word engagement has more juice.
THE EPHRON LETTER MAY 2006 2

ERWIN EPHRON WWW.EPHRONONMEDIA.COM
It describes a consumers inner
state which we expect to be more
emotional than recall and ratings
suggest. We look for engagement
to turn-on a consumer. I think
that kind of thinking has
muddied the trail.
Certainly media content can create emotional connections with
consumers, but they seldom spill over to the advertising. Most
evidence is that advertising tends to break the magic spell.
The companion idea of context in the sense of content supportive
to the products advertised is even weaker. Context is the strong
suit of selective media. TV is a mass medium. which seldom offers
contextual opportunities if only because of the range of products
advertised in a program. In TV, context is the realm of product
placement.
What the Philips channel-lock device suggests is instead of
attempting to discover what creates engagement, lets think about
engagement as something thats already there. After all most
viewers are watching the program when the commercials appear.
And the value of the program in engaging viewers is captured by
audience data higher rated programs are by most measures, more
engaging.

THE EPHRON LETTER MAY 2006 3

ERWIN EPHRON WWW.EPHRONONMEDIA.COM
THE SECRET OF ENGAGEMENT
I think the flat, emotion-free statement TV attracts viewers who
are delivered to the advertising holds the secret of engagement. It
says our engagement problem is in the delivery. Its in the handoff
of attentive consumers from media
content to advertising, and the
frequent loss of attentiveness along
the way. Whats new about this
formulation is it forces us to focus on
what turns engagement off, rather
than what turns consumers on.
Its obvious that television is less
effective because people are paying
less attention to the ads. People are
paying less attention to the ads
because there are too many of them.
This loss of attention is really what the search for engagement
should be about. The executive summary reads TV content attracts
consumers; too much advertising drives them away. Sound
plausible?
The hunt for emotional and contextual measures of engagement is a
poor investment of our energy. It ignores the very obvious role of
over-commercialization (and that includes program promos) in
driving viewers away from the advertising. We look elsewhere
perhaps because the clutter problem seems divisive and much
harder to solve.
THE EPHRON LETTER MAY 2006 4

ERWIN EPHRON WWW.EPHRONONMEDIA.COM
The challenge is to put a number on
the cost advertisers are paying right
now for the clutter that is neutering
their messages. And see if that
money can be better spent in
reducing commercial load, much like
the ClearChannel Less-is-more
initiative in radio. Unless we attempt
to do that our engagement problem will remain emotional,
unsolvable and TV will continue to self-destruct.
ENGAGEMENT AND PLANNING
Media are first audience gatherers and then audience deliverers.
They can assist advertising engagement by attracting an audience
suited to the message and by keeping that audience attentive to the
advertising. Media content in itself usually does not create
advertising engagement. That is done by the advertising.
We can bring engagement measures into media planning by
reducing audience counts to potential buyers who actually see the
ads. In this scenario we can improve TV measurements by
improving targeting. Moving from demos to users which can make
our messages more relevant. And by monitoring the hand-off of
audience from content to advertising. How many interruptions,
how many commercials? The data are available.
It is estimated that the average cable system will expand ad
insertion capabilities to an additional 30 channels in the next two
THE EPHRON LETTER MAY 2006 5

ERWIN EPHRON WWW.EPHRONONMEDIA.COM
years, adding thousands of commercial units to a market that is
already over-supplied.
No wonder viewers tend to wander. And locking the channel
when ads appear wont bring them back.
Erwin Ephron