Mediafly / Demand Metric: "Interactive content shows 52.6% higher engagement than static; buyers spend 13 vs 8.5 minutes" — vendor sources, treat as marketing not fact

Claim: Compiled industry statistics state: "Interactive content demonstrates 52.6% higher engagement levels than static content," and "buyers dedicate 13 minutes to consuming interactive content, surpassing the 8.5 minutes spent on static content" — both attributed to Mediafly / Demand Metric research.

Source: Mediafly "The State of Interactive Content"; Demand Metric reports (see Demand Metric 2014 Content & the Buyer's Journey Benchmark Study — vendor-sponsored online opinion survey of 185 marketers; the "2× engagement" headline rounds 70%/36% for the master ion-interactive-sponsored survey trace).

Confidence: Single-source / vendor-incentive flagged.

Caveat: Mediafly sells content-engagement software; ion interactive (now Rock Content) sponsored the underlying Demand Metric survey. Figures repeated across many blogs but trace to vendor / sponsored studies. Never present as established fact.

Why this matters for Candid: Worked example of how the vendor outcome stats get laundered through repetition. Use the mechanism evidence (Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng (2006), Journal of Marketing Research — goal-gradient in consumer contexts: cafe loyalty stamps completed faster as customers neared reward; online raters persist longer near reward, Nielsen Norman Group — engagement modelled as expected utility = perceived value minus interaction cost; abandonment can happen within seconds when perceived value drops) instead. See R1 — When recommending an interactive tool, LEAD on peer-reviewed mechanism evidence (goal-gradient, self-reference, IKEA, reciprocity, anchoring) — NOT vendor "2× / 47% / 16.9×" stats and the parallel rule from the calculator brief R5 — Disregard vendor-sourced "interactive content converts better" statistics in client conversations.