Marketers spend a lot of time talking about “engagement.” It’s become one of the go-to buzzwords surrounding brand and campaign strategy — especially in conversations led by platforms that have been selling the idea that marketers should be heavily investing in engagement (by, for instance, deploying influencers and creators).
Which all broadly makes sense, except that figuring out what “engagement” with content/messaging actually means to brands these days — and what they hope to get from it — is incredibly tricky.
For instance, as Ad Age’s Gillian Follett and Brandon Doerrer recently reported, “More than half (53%) of the 200 U.S. marketers surveyed for influencer marketing agency Linqia’s October 2024 State of Influencer Marketing report said ‘determining the ROI’ of their influencer campaigns was the biggest challenge impacting their influencer marketing strategies.”
Meanwhile, to put it bluntly, a lot of users who are signaling that they’re engaged with content are actually more or less faking it. According to a Penn State study that was published in the academic journal Nature Human Behavior in November, an analysis of 35 million news links that were shared on Facebook showed that “75% of the shares were made without the posters clicking the link first.” (As Penn State put it in the ironic title of a press release announcing the publication of the study, “Social media users probably won’t read beyond this headline, researchers say.”)
And the illusion of engagement can also extend from content to products — because even hot “trending” merch that goes viral doesn’t necessarily quickly move the needle for most consumers who are active on social platforms. As Chain Store Age’s Zachary Russell reported in January, “New research from Relex Solutions found that while 84% of consumers purchase trending products they discover on social platforms, only 11% purchase the items within 24 hours. More than half (55%) take up to a month to finally make the purchase, suggesting thoughtful consideration over impulse buying.”
How marketers can rethink audience engagement
None of this is to suggest that marketers should totally abandon the goal of nurturing engagement and attention. Rather, marketers just need to rigorously define what meaningful engagement specifically amounts to for their brands and campaigns — and then think of that engagement (on social media and beyond) as just one piece of a puzzle across a data-driven omnichannel strategy.
At Quad, we work with more than 2,500 brands across every imaginable vertical — from retail and CPG to health and financial services — and the one big thing we’re advising marketers to do right now is to rethink their approach to audience. Doing that requires a paradigm shift that involves shifting from device-centric thinking (i.e., cookies) and a focus on attributes (e.g., demographic categories) to people-focused marketing (i.e., personalized, targeted campaigns).
By focusing on delivering relevant messaging and content to people — actual living, breathing individuals — your brand is much more likely to spark a moment of connection rather than annoyance. It’s about getting the right kind of attention from consumers.
Supercharging audience engagement strategies with household-centric data
Our POV at Quad is that the most holistic understanding of people starts with where they live — literally. We begin with information available at the household level and then layer it with additional consumer data points gleaned from other channels as well as transactional activity. The household serves as a core identifier where passions and interests can be connected to an individual consumer to drive authentic audience engagement.
The key thing is that the household is a place where consumers give off real, meaningful signals about who they really are. It’s a place, in other words, where they are decidedly not faking it. At home, they receive publications and catalogs that cater to their interests, and they spend their hard-earned dollars online (and at nearby stores) — consistently purchasing products and services that satisfy their needs and feed their passions.
As part of our data stack, which touches 92% of all U.S. households and 97% of the total U.S. adult population, Quad tracks all manner of consumer passions — from home décor and gardening to cooking and baking.
And the beautiful thing about that? If you know what consumers are truly passionate about, you can message them in ways that can inspire real actions — rather than half-hearted (or even fake) “engagement.”
Want to learn more? Download Quad’s “2025 audience strategy guide: 7 things brands must do to maximize marketing impact.”
