—Offer a new way to interact with users: Hearst launched Q&A sections on Seventeen and CosmoGIRL in April; advertisers can buy standard banner ads or come in as an “expert” and answer readers’ questions. A brand like Clearasil can buy an expert spot in the beauty section, for example, and pay for overall engagement (in this case, the percentage of users that ask or answer a question), but also on an impression basis. “They can say, ‘we want 100,000 people to see the entire Q&A thread,’ or even get the Q&A as part of a buy across the whole network; the bottom line is that they’re adding value to the audience’s conversation,” said Matt Milner, Hearst Magazines Digital Media’s VP of social media.

—Tie engagement to a purchase: IM-based virtual world IMVU Credits is reportedly bringing in about $1.7 million in revenue per month, 90 percent of which comes from the sale of virtual goods (via Virtual Worlds News). And it’s just starting to do branded merchandise deals with advertisers. “There’s no reason that a legit brand couldn’t sell at least 100,000 items over several months,” said IMVU Credits’s VP of business and finance Kevin Dasch. “But we can also give them real-time stats about the number of times a user wears their item, the amount of time they spend looking at their page, as well as the number of groups that have popped up around them on our network. We try and bundle those stats with some standard banner impressions, so advertisers can measure their spend in the ‘traditional’ way, but also get comfortable with this kind of engagement.”

Kiernan called other options, like in-game ad units, “very engagement oriented,” since advertisers only pay once a player views the ad at a predetermined angle, for a minimum amount of time. “We’re still buying on a CPM, but it’s a more accountable CPM,” he said. Kiernan added that the majority of buys were still made on a CPM or CPC basis—with engagement metrics bundled in as an add-on. Meanwhile, Publishers Clearing House is tracking the number of people that enter their contests via networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. “We’ve generated about 9,000 contest entries from a pool of about 1,500 fans across various networks,” said Alex Betancur, GM and VP of PCH Online. “That’s 9,000 opportunities to present them with magazine offers—which is how we define engagement.”