Customer engagement with multichannel advertising on the wane

A new global report has found that consumer engagement with cross-channel ad campaigns is in decline - partly because of marketers losing sight of their key task of generating demand

The Fournaise Marketing Group study tracked Fournaise’s large, SME and agency clients across all media in 20 countries worldwide and noted that cross-channel ad campaigns generated 19pc less customer response and engagement in the first half of 2011, compared with 2010.

Furthermore, online display and sponsorship were hit with a 26pc and 35pc decrease respectively. B2B and B2C campaigns were both affected.
Fournaise believes the fall in engagement rates is down to financial caution from consumers and businesses, and to ad campaigns being less effective and marketers focusing too much on creativity and new media, rather than taking a ‘pragmatic approach’ and focusing on the customer benefits and competitive strengths of their products.

“At a time when CEOs and stakeholders are asking marketing to achieve better results and a better marketing ROI to get more customer demand, a 19pc decrease in advertising response is alarming” says Jerome Fontaine, CEO and chief tracker of Fournaise.

“We also noticed too many traditional marketers lost sight of the fact that the job of their ad campaigns is to generate customer demand for their products/services, not to just look pretty and clever in the media.”