Content marketers are warming up to an interactive model—requiring participants’ active engagement—to drive engagement and customer response. Ion Interactive, an interactive content solutions provider, and the Content Marketing Institute found that 53 percent of content marketers are using interactive content, and that 75 percent plan on increasing their use of the medium in 2016.

Their study, “Deliver Peak Experiences From Interactive Content,” based on a survey drawn from a pool of more than 20,000 content marketers, found that 81 percent say interactive content does a better job of grabbing consumers’ attention, 79 percent report that it enhances retention of brand messaging, and 79 percent agree that it can have residual value, bringing in repeat visitors and multiple exposures. However, the survey revealed that education (75 percent), rather than engagement (59 percent), is the primary reason marketers deploy interactive content.

“CMI’s research illustrates that marketers are getting business results when they add interactive content to their mix,” says Justin Talerico, Ion Interactive’s CEO and co-founder. “That said, one of my favorite quotes from this new research is not a stat, but rather an observation made by [CMI Senior Contributing Strategic Analyst Tim] Walters and [CMI Chief Strategy Officer Robert] Rose that gets to our philosophy and passion: ‘The web’s internet foundation was specifically built to allow communication, exchange and interaction. And yet for years, the web was a static, one-way publishing platform. Interactive content puts the ‘inter-net’ at the heart of the web for the first time—it is the ‘true identity’ of the web finally coming to the fore.’”

In their findings, Walters and Rose report, “The expansion of the typical website monologue into a true two-way dialogue can give you deeper insight into what consumers are trying to achieve and how you can help them. It’s the difference between watching customers as they stroll through a store and having a conversation with them. The information and inputs that consumers provide when using interactive content lead to richer profiles, better lead scoring and improved nurturing of prospects along the buyer’s journey.”

More on the survey’s findings are available here.