Are there any differences in the effects of advertisements in evening newspapers and advertisements in weekly magazines? In what ways do they differ and how should you explain the differences? These were some of the questions raised by VECTU - the Swedish association of Weekly magazines. This comparison was primarily interesting in the case of female readers of the two different types of print media. During the spring 1981, 30 different advertisements were measured in the same standradized way. Each advertisement were shown to a national representative sample of 250 women. As only some ads were measured at each survey, a total of 1250 women were included in the whole study. 15 evening paper advertisements and 15 advertisements from weekly magazines were selected. In the same survey the interests of the women in the three different subjects, as well as their expectations on the evening papers and on the weekly magazines in these very respects were studied. The results from the comparative study show that both observation and reading, as well as some of the evaluative measurements were in favour for ads in the weekly magazines.
This paper tries to clarify some of the contents of the medium quality and shows one rather simple way of measuring the expectations of the female readers of a number of selected Swedish Consumer magazines. In two subsequent studies in 1977 the motives of female readers of the selected magazines were investigated. Our first conclusion was that the attitudes and the expectations of the women very closely were related to different head subjects of the magazines. A magazine is a good one if it deals with subjects you are interested in, and a bad one if it treats these subjects less well or is lacking of them.