Page 32 - AdNews Mar-Apr 2021

Investigation
how they are interacting and engaging with the content.
Bush agrees that measurement has been an ongoing issue for the industry, especially when com- pared to other areas of marketing such as digital, public relations and advertising which can all demonstrate measurable results.
“How do you measure a good experience? It’s not easy,” he says. “If you combine the data we’re get- ting from streaming the virtual and time watching, and you layer that into the data we’re capturing from onsite and the engagement time and dwell time, all of a sud- den those metrics become a lot more focused for experiential.
“So the agencies that get that right are going to do really well because brands want to make sure that when they start to spend money on experiential again, they’re getting great value for those experiences.”
During the next 12 months, Bush says GPJ will begin to proto- type what he calls a “data meas- urement index for experiences” which it hopes will reinforce the power of experiential.
“As a global agency, we feel we’ve got a leadership position to take on this,” he says. “So we’re in the middle of building out early stage prototypes of a data engine that will hopefully reinforce to our clients the experiences we’re cre- ating actually have an impact on their customers.”
Experiential reimagined
Technology has begun to be weaved into experiences for some time now. As Panchal mentioned, his team and others in the indus- try have been using it to help measure success of live events.
Aside from this, there has been a move towards brands and experien- tial marketers finding ways to create a more immersive experience for audiences. Augmented reality (AR) only a year ago would have been con- sidered an “emerging” technology, but by the end of 2020 it became completely mainstream with the sur- prising revival of the QR code.
David Loughan, managing direc- tor at immersive technology crea- tive agency Unbnd, says WebAR — which is what QR codes use — has been completely democratised.