Blog Post

The "Participation Age" and its Effects on Brand Engagement

Spin Creative • Oct 06, 2019

Many marketing professionals are calling today's advertising era the "participation age," a time in which marketers are seeking the online engagement of its customers to stay competitive and ahead of the curve.

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Google and Advertising age conducted some researchthat we found very relevant to our video marketing work here at Spin Creative. This research examined how people engage with brands online, as well as the opposite: how brands engage with their consumers.


Here are some of the key findings from that research.

· Engaged consumers buy more products. This alone should give you an idea of why it's so important to do everything possible to engage a wide variety of online users. Research shows that the more a person engages with a brand, the more often they buy products online. A group called "hyper engagers," people who engage with brands at least once a week, reported by far the highest online purchase rates. The other groups, engagers (engage with brands less than once a week) and traditionalists (avoid online engagement) had much lower online purchase rates.


· Social recommendations matter. Engagers and hyper-engagers are much more likely to become involved or engaged with a brand if people they know recommend that brand to them. This makes it important to regularly monitor your reviews and testimonials.


· Active companies on social media retain their customers. Companies that actively manage their online interactions with consumers were less likely to lose customers to competitors than companies that do not actively manage their online interactions or companies that do not prioritize engagement at all.


· Online ads drive significant amounts of engagement. An overwhelming majority of hyper engagers reported that they use online ads to help make purchase decisions sometimes or often. More than half of engagers reported the same, and about 30% of traditionalists.


We highly recommend that you read the full study to get the full benefit of its findings, but this brief overview should give you a sense of the data it uncovered. While some of this information may seem like common sense, it should reinforce the idea that engagement is absolutely crucial to today's marketing world. You must work with marketing and advertising professionals that understand how to draw and keep the interest of online consumers.

Say hello and let's explore how to drive engagement for your brand in the "participation era."


About Us


Spin Creative is a video production company and creative agency helping marketers create winning video and creative strategies that engage, inspire and activate targeted audiences. Spin is headquartered in Seattle with offices in San Francisco and London, serving brands around the globe.


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