Merging Media and the Market

“Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?”

Chuck Palahniuk

A consumer’s engagement and participation level make mediums more or less involving than other mediums.  Television is considered a low-involvement medium because commercials are animate while the viewer is inanimate, and because the pace of viewing is out of the viewer’s control and there is little opportunity for reflection and making connections.  As such, newspapers and magazines are high involvement media because the advertising is inanimate while the reader is animate. 

The primary aspect of consumer participation that determines the involvement of a medium is whether or not the consumer controls their pace of exposure.  For example, when watching television consumers have less control over how much time they spend or don’t spend watching commercials.  On the other hand, with magazines and newspapers the consumer has more control over how much time they spend reading each advertisement.  However, streaming video allows the animate qualities of television and the control of magazines and newspapers: making vlogs, marketing shorts, and other online videos a very effective marketing tactic. 

Engagement is being defined as the new currency for advertising return on investment.  Consumer engagement is similar to the concept of high and low involvement media in the sense that highly engaging media lends itself more to complex advertising content.  The industry has finally moved beyond simply measuring the number of people that see an ad, to understanding how viewers are actually interacting with it.  Vlogs have merged the benefits of traditional low and high involvement mediums. 

Consumers have the power to control their interaction with vlogs, and re-experience them based on their individual whims.  As such, vlogs also can disseminate more information to consumers, which use to only be appropriate for high-involvement mediums.  Vlogs allow consumers to experience and reflect on the information that is being provided to them on their own terms.  Furthermore, streaming videos allows consumers to experience vlogs and video virtually on demand.  Video encompassing forms of engaging new media seem to be the future of both affective and effective integrated communications. 

Arin