SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico\u2014Consumer reported engagement rates across different advertising media show that \u201cthe digital channels are kind of in the toilet,\u201d says Forrester\u2019s Joanna O\u2019Connell. Changing that will be a bit more complicated than just figuring out what constitutes premium ad environments, where engagement tends to be higher. The VP and Principal Analyst says in this interview at Beet Retreat 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n O\u2019Connell\u2019s observations are based on research Forrester has done plus findings from other sources. Combined they indicate that \u201cyou just generally find the reported engagement rates for the digital channels are just generally much lower,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter whether a respondent is 55 or younger and more progressive, where engagement is nonetheless \u201cpretty low.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether this knowledge flies in the face of big shifts in marketers\u2019 ad budgets to the digital realm, O\u2019Connell<\/a> says there\u2019s nothing wrong with being where one\u2019s consumers are.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question is, what are we doing with those opportunities when we have them with these people? What do you make of that moment you have to grab their attention?\u201d<\/p>\n She cites shortcomings like \u201cfrequency run amuck\u201d and hyper personalization of ads without fully understanding how consumers are actually perceiving such personalization. \u201cWe just have a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the research Forrester found shows that in general, \u201cyou will find that in premium environments response rates are in fact better. So there is value in being associated with these high quality publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n What constitutes \u201cpremium\u201d? This is where much of the complexity arises, because brands like Huggies might want to advertise in content that Vice would shun to promote \u201can edgy content series. It doesn\u2019t fundamentally mean that one is bad content and another is good, or one is high quality and another is low quality. It means understanding what\u2019s appropriate in that moment,\u201d says O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n So for the time being, consumers will continue to lead a revolution while the advertising industry attempts to manage an evolution involving varying infrastructure, organizational design and \u201clots of business rules that is hard to flip upside down.\u201d She will be conducting more research to examine success stories in the \u201cpractical realities\u201d of omni-channel advertising along with her colleague, Jim Nail<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope we find great examples of that happening, because I want us to be able to say \u2018here\u2019s a model for how it can work.\u2019 I don\u2019t know yet what I\u2019m going to find.\u201d<\/p>\n