The magazine industry has been criticized for being slow to respond in the area of accountability. With accountability being one of the advertising industry’s buzzwords, it’s only fair that magazines are being held to the same evaluation standards as other media. In recent years, the accountability of this medium has been called into question as some titles have inflated circulation estimates in order to maintain overall rate base and premium page rates.

With corporations under increased pressure to show how every dollar spent delivers results, marketing budgets are under the same level of scrutiny as other corporate investments. Advertisers expect to see a positive return on investment from their marketing and advertising efforts. They want to know which elements of the plan help achieve their goals, which do not, and then be able to allocate their budgets accordingly on an on-going basis.

As marketers try to determine which mix of vehicles will produce the greatest ROI, they first need to define how it will be measured. Two primary metrics include proof of advertising performance and return on objective. Magazines have made tremendous strides in both of these areas.

ABC Rapid Report – Proof of Performance
Audience delivery is one measure of proof of performance. Advertisers and agencies need to determine the value of a vehicle before recommending it on a media plan. Therefore, the campaign result, or its proof of performance, is critical information and needs to be timely. As media accountability pressures increase, it’s important to get this information to the market as quickly as possible. The magazine industry took notice and began working with the Audit Bureau of Circulations to use the internet in order to create a faster way to deliver information regarding specific title and/or issue. This new tool gives advertisers and agencies access to current circulation data within weeks of the on-sale date. With the old process, advertisers and agencies had to wait six months to a year to determine audience accumulation.

The name of this new tool is ABC Rapid Report. It provides advertisers and agencies with the accountability they desire and allows publishers to be more responsive to a changing marketplace as trends develop. With the increased frequency of data, planners can evaluate more accurately how all titles build reach against the target. Rapid Report eliminates the guesswork and the waiting game of audience accumulation.

With ABC serving as an independent third-party administrator of the program, Empower believes the data is credible. Increasing the frequency also allows publishers to be more competitive with other media platforms. With online access to timely per-issue circulation data, media planners and buyers are better equipped to compare traditional print media against other competitive media such as television and the Internet. These other media vehicles are able to determine audiences and their compositions within minutes or a day of activity.

To date, magazines’ measurement of return on objective has also been somewhat limited. Information such as “noted the ad” or “associated an ad” was provided by the Roper Starch Company across numerous magazine categories. Recently the magazine industry partnered with Affinity Research to create a program called Vista studies. These studies are a vast improvement on the old process. These new metrics examine how different magazine creative executions and title selection can influence consumer action.

Vista is a syndicated research service that measures advertising effectiveness and reader involvement. Metrics include:

1. having a more favorable opinion about the advertiser
2. recommending the product or service to a friend or family member
3. gathering more information; visiting a store, dealer, or other location
4. purchasing the advertised product or service
5. saving the ad for future reference

Vista Print Effectiveness Rating Service – Return On Objective
Vista can also ask questions to get at the involvement of the reader. Engaged readers are often an advertiser’s best prospects. Vista is able to measure engagement metrics such as time spent reading, reading occasions, source of magazine copy, immediacy of reading and demographics.

Advertiser benefits of Vista studies include turnkey answers to the ROO or accountability questions that are posed. These studies also leverage the speed and flexibility of the Internet to deliver real-time print intelligence when an ad is still in the hands of magazine readers. They provide opportunities to ask proprietary questions to collect in-depth information about a campaign. Custom survey models can be appended to the end of each measured issue-specific Vista study.

Survey modules are typically used to collect more detailed information about a specific print campaign, pre-test the next phase of an on-going campaign, elicit more in-depth reader involvement/editorial feedback or gather additional insights about a publication’s audience. Depending on the length of a magazine campaign, planners can optimize an existing schedule or apply knowledge gained to future magazine campaigns. They can also move dollars out of under-delivering magazines, or take dollars to the bottom line if the magazine is over-delivering.

In 2006 a major department store worked with Vista to have its ads measured across a number of titles and categories. The retailer was looking to determine what impact a well-timed ad unit would have on a holiday sale. They worked with a mass-reach weekly title to run three insertions in the weeks leading up to the holiday sale. The retailer worked with Vista to understand not only the ad recall and brand association for the ad, but also what type of action the readers took upon seeing the advertisements. Vista’s research showed these well-timed offers resulted in consistently high “actions taken” scores that were higher than all other “actions taken” scores for all other ads of similar sizes within this publication.

SUMMARY
Empower has always been a proponent of magazines given their ability to build reach, provide a deeper sell and target specific readers. However, some in the advertising industry have given magazines a bad reputation based on their perceived lack of accountability. Often times there is uncertainty as to who is reading magazines and if readers are even seeing the ads within the pages of a title. Given these circumstances, it is encouraging to see magazines respond and develop tools to directly combat the issues. By more effectively capturing readership within a shorter time frame, magazine planners have more flexibility and better data to make recommendations to the media plan. Vista studies can provide both advertisers and agencies with information regarding how engaged readers are with a specific title and the advertisements within. Empower believes these new metrics will have a positive impact on a campaign’s potential ROI. Gone are the days when magazines were only used as a branding medium!