LAS VEGAS – Nielsen veteran Karthik Rao senses a resurgence of engagement as a metric for marketers. If that’s so, then the sky is the limit because while advertising reach has its limits, engagement does not.
As he attends Nielsen’s annual Consumer 360 gathering, the theme of engagement “seems to be what everybody’s building their mousetrap around,” says Rao, who is President of the company’s Expanded Verticals unit.
Having begun his career at Ogilvy & Mather in India, Rao is quite familiar with marketers operating in silos, wherein “the direct marketing team sits separately from the advertising or media management team.” He says the need is increasingly for people to have a 360-degree view not only of how they reach consumers, but how effective they are in doing so.
“That is the premise for why attribution modeling is important, because it captures the impact of various touch points and how those touch points interact with each other to drive an outcome,” Rao says.
Nielsen gauges engagement with its Three R approach: Reach, Resonance and Reaction.
“At the end of the day it’s all about engagement,” Rao says. “Because engagement has no limit. Reach has a limit. The more you can engage your consumer, the more they are loyal to you.” This video is part of series produced at Consumer 360.
The series is sponsored by Nielsen. Please visit this page for additional segments.
