{"id":1838,"slug":"quarantine-mediafly-interactive-engagement-52-6-percent-2022","title":"QUARANTINE — \"Interactive content drives 52.6% more engagement / 13 min vs 8.5 min\" traces to a single Mediafly press release 2022; B2B sales-enablement decks, NOT marketing-website visitors","kind":"research-notes","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["measurement","editorial-discipline","citation-practices","interactive-tool-mechanisms"],"reference_body":"**Quarantined claim:** *\"Interactive content drives 52.6% more engagement / 13 min vs 8.5 min.\"*\n\n**Provenance trail:** PROVENANCE CONFIRMED — QUARANTINE. Traced to a **single Mediafly press release (PR Newswire, Feb 23, 2022)**. Measured across **232,955 users in 99 Mediafly customer environments** — i.e., **B2B sales-enablement decks delivered through the vendor's own platform, NOT marketing-website visitors**, using a **vendor-defined \"engagement\" metric for the vendor's own product.** Every 2024–2026 repetition traces back to this one release.\n\n**Reason for exclusion:**\n- Vendor self-measurement of its own product (Mediafly sells the platform that produces the metric).\n- **Non-website context** — sales-enablement decks are not marketing-website visits.\n- ~4 years stale.\n\n**Source:** prnewswire.com (Mediafly release, Feb 23, 2022); cross-vendor repetition tracking, June 2026.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (the provenance trail; not the claim itself).\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Do not cite this number in any client-facing material. When SEO vendors quote it, point at the actual source. The gap it leaves is real ([[gap-no-primary-dataset-interactive-features-smb-conversion]]) — the response is to argue [[capability-interactive-functionality]] on mechanism grounds, not on this stat.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"capability-interactive-functionality","title":"Capability 2 — interactive functionality: the visitor supplies input and the site returns a computed or looked-up result (calculator, quote, search, booking, configurator)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"gap-no-primary-dataset-interactive-features-smb-conversion","title":"GAP — no clean, current, primary dataset ties interactive features (calculators, booking, account state) specifically to conversion / retention for general SMB marketing websites","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-website-as-working-surface-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"gap-no-primary-dataset-interactive-features-smb-conversion","title":"GAP — no clean, current, primary dataset ties interactive features (calculators, booking, account state) specifically to conversion / retention for general SMB marketing websites","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"capability-interactive-functionality","title":"Capability 2 — interactive functionality: the visitor supplies input and the site returns a computed or looked-up result (calculator, quote, search, booking, configurator)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"caveats-working-surface-vendor-self-reporting-and-context-mismatch","title":"Caveats for the working-surface brief: independent anchors (Pew, peer-reviewed GEO paper, Ahrefs large-N) carry the load; vendor figures are range / corroboration, not independent confirmation","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.765Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.765Z"}