مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

Engagement is one of the most widely used concepts in modern advertising. ComScore ARS, for example, conducted a decade-long study of audience diagnostics and reports that persuasiveness is highest in high advertising engagement conditions and that early and sustained advertising engagement is the best predictor of video advertisement effectiveness (Ziliak, 2011). The company concludes that advertising engagement is a necessary component of persuasion and is as important to the determination of advertising effectiveness as other metrics (e.g., brand relevance, linkage, and differentiation). Yet, despite its popularity and documented link to effectiveness, the concept remains ambiguous and unclear (Calder, Malthouse, & Schaedel, 2009) and “perhaps the least understood while simultaneously one of the most overused” constructs of advertising research (Gluck, 2012, p. 2). This conceptual underdevelopment results in a lack of clarity regarding the construct and its effectiveness, leading practitioners and theorists to often miscast the consequences of engagement as advertising engagement itself (Calder et al., 2009) or to conflate it with similar concepts, such as involvement or interactivity (Mollen & Wilson, 2010).

The Advertising Research Foundation (2006) defines advertising engagement as “turning on a prospect to a brand message enhanced by the surrounding context” (Wang, 2006, p. 355). This definition is widely cited and embraced, at least in terms of conceptual direction, because it covers a wide range of internal (i.e., psychological engagement) and external (i.e., behavioral engagement such as clicking) reactions to advertisements, and reflects the essence of what ad engagement is thought to be – the consumer experience of being turned on. However, as noted above, though broadly inclusive and directionally sound, the ARF definition is criticized as being too broad for practical applications in the measurement of advertising engagement (Calder et al., 2009). According to Calder and Malthouse (2008), the industry needs “not only to pin it down but also to determine how to measure it [engagement]” (p. 2).

Guided by the theories of immersion and presence, which are germane to the state of being turned on by mediated experiences, the current study builds on conceptual thinking and research to help fill theoretical and methodological gaps in the literature. Using the context of TV advertising, the study seeks to first, add theoretical clarity to the conceptual boundary of advertising engagement and second, advance research on the construct by producing a validated scale for measuring TV ad engagement.