This paper will cover the current situation for research into newspaper sections and will concentrate on a "private research project" and why for the time being this research can help guide advertisers and agencies in the media planning process. The research is a joint initiative with the guarantors being a newspaper publisher, an advertising agency and a major advertiser. Another ten advertising agencies will sponsor the research. The objectives of the research are as follows:- "To meet an established market need by providing information, of practical guidance, on the reading of newspaper magazines, review sections and other separately printed sections, and to illustrate the variances between individual sections or groups of sections (e.g. mid-market v quality or review sections v gravure magazines) and different days of publication (e.g. Saturday v Sunday). To assist the media planning process by providing further guidance on how these sections are read and used, and how readers are involved with them." Newspaper section research has been at the top of the IPAâs "want list" for some time now and therefore the paper will be of interest to all areas and sides of the advertising industry. It will be the aim of the paper to inform and bring new "news" to the debate and to help and guide any work on future or subsequent projects in this area.
The subject of this contribution is the succesful market-launch of the news-magazine FOCUS in Germany in 1993. We shall begin by examining the genesis of the magazine: from the original conceptual vision to the point of its realisation. Central to the contribution is the accompanying market research. This was conducted by renowned market-research institutes, which examined, from differing perspectives, the consumer, the reader, and the market. Infratest, Munich, conducted advance studies among potential readers, a point of sale survey on the first day of issue as well as follow- up surveys among readers. Media Market Analysis delivered the first range and structure data. Sinus, Heidelberg, examined the milieu-membership of subscribers. The Sample Institute, Mdlln, appraised the readers, catalogued their personality traits, identified types and created attitude constellations. The Institute for Opinion Research, Allensbach, conducted copy-tests. The Institute for Communication Research at the University of Munich analyzed the content of FOCUS and DER SPIEGEL. Several quotes taken from newspaper articles document the reaction in other countries to the introduction of FOCUS in Germany. The present situation, which boasts an attractive readership, rising circulation figures and successful advertising business, will also be discussed briefly. To end with, the prospects for future developments of FOCUS will be sketched; developments, with FOCUS TV and FOCUS on-line, in the direction of a comprehensive communications offering.
Optimizing the layout of front pages becomes more and more important for daily newsstand papers in order to catch the buyers attention. Therefore a technique had to be developed, whose intended aim was to work out indications of the readers acceptance of such a change, which later on could be used to stabilize resp. increase the papers newsstand sales, but also would take the subscribers needs - in the sense of likes and dislikes - into consideration. Using a mix of group discussions and quantitative C.A.P.I.-interviews, respondents of the three major target groups of buyers, subscribers and non-readers were asked to either actually create their own individual front page or, to choose and rate their favorites out of a wide selection of different dummy front pages. Parallel to this survey a recognition test - like a tachistoscope - with the different front pages was realized. Here the aim was to check whether or not each layout is still associated by the reader with the newspaper itself. With the help of a final multivariate analysis the importance of every single layout- and content-related element can be worked out and thus enable - in the sense of a conjoint- analysis - the optimization of front pages. One major difficulty for the following contribution is of course, to bring to life the vividness and fascination of the new technologies to be described. A real presentation that will get most of the audience impressed, probably seems somewhat dull written on paper, a medium some 500 years old. Therefore a CD-ROM multimedia presentation including all tested images can be obtained after the seminar in Vienna through the author.
In the last two years the amount of published diagnostic information on effective frequency has increased considerably. Most of this work, which challenges much current established thinking, has been concerned solely with television, but in itself this concentration of effort on a competitive medium is significant for publishers. A number of key studies of this type, with their conclusions, are described briefly. The recent work by Millward Brown for IPC Magazines Ltd is also concerned with frequency, but it focuses attention on the extent to which the impact of magazine campaigns can be increased by ensuring that individual creative treatments do not become over- exposed. This work is described and the conclusions drawn so far described. This Millward Brown work is breakthrough and very positive research for publishers, but it is argued that it needs to be seen as only the start of a programme of sales related experimental studies designed to explore the mechanics of print advertising campaigns. It is suggested that print has much to gain from such greater knowledge.
To obtain insights into how advertising works, it is important to appreciate the factors influencing its action on the public. It is necessary to define the term "advertising" prior to going further. Advertising can be said to be any (and in fact, all) communication about a particular object (person, place, product, etc.), designed to inform or persuade. With the proliferation of media vehicles, the possible combinations between which the "Halo Effect" can be checked are large in number. This paper will attempt to address one such combination and ascertain if the "Halo Effect" does, indeed, impact the way advertising works. It addresses the issue in the context of the print medium - specifically English-language womenâs and film magazines.
Since April 1994 the Bundesverband Deutscher Anzeigenblatter (BVDA) and its member publishers have been pursuing their concept of systematic readership research for editorial and advertising marketing. On the basis of research standards, set up by the Zentralverband der Werbewirtschafit (ZAW) and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mediaanalyse (AG.MA), the BVDA has developed a standard model for local reach analyses. The aim of this initiative is to provide more openness and a better planning basis for the advertisers in the local market. Furthermore, it will enable the advertisers to compare the profitability of ffee-sheets with that of local competitors especially with the daily regional newspapers. These analyses also allow to check the editorial competence and acceptance of free-sheets in order to put the strategic decisions of the publishers on a sound basis and to reveal deficiencies. It is TRUE the use of media in Germany has become much more selective due to the increasing information supply and the grown variety of media. But despite or exactly because of these changes local topics related to terms like shopping, leisure-time and local events and incidents are of great interest to the population. Free-sheets put their editorial focus exactly on these local service information and even give them a "human touch". They complete the general local information supply of the regional daily papers and the local radio stations with a weekly overview.This is confirmed by the results of the analyses. Generally more than 60% of the German population read an average issue of a local free-sheet. Despite partly great regional differences in mentality there is a great correspondence in the use of free-sheets. Beside information about important events and incidents in their local area the readers mention their interest in ads of retailers and service trade. In the media landscape of Germany free-sheets are the only mass medium which is read not only because of the editorial information but also particularly because the local ads are of great interest to the consumer.
To what extent does present-day media research fulfil the needs of the user? From advertisers, especially, there is quite some criticism regarding the relevance of existing readership surveys. Although there is no doubt about the benefits of appropriate quantitative media data, the marketeer/product manager and the media strategist are demanding additional and more qualitative data to support their media strategies. From the point of view of the advertiser, media research has concentrated too much on the fine-tuning of reach figures in relation to selected target groups. But now that advertisers are increasingly building up their own knowledge of media and communication, it is important that the advertiser and the media adviser communicate with each other in the same language. Quality Planning, the model that will be described in this paper, is an attempt to bridge the gap between the so often separated worlds of the marketer and the media specialist. In this paper, we will first describe the background of the Quality Planning model. In the second part, we will discuss the research design. The third chapter describes some practical applications and the status of Quality Planning so far.
In April 1993 I presented a paper at the Worldwide Readership Symposium in San Francisco, reporting on our Quality of Reading Survey among 2,5 adults in the UK. Using the CAPI technique pioneered by RSL, we evaluated more than 30 magazines and newspaper supplements in terms of the relationship their readers had with these publications. We aimed for a portrait of the publication depicting the satisfaction, standards and values which the reader attributes to it, supplementing the basic questions on recency and frequency of reading (as asked in the British NRS) with questions on the number of separate reading occasions, the total time spent reading, and the amount (proportion) usually read. These were followed by 18 statements where respondents were asked to say to which if any of a number of publications they applied. The research showed that magazine images were invariably better among their more committed readers - subscribers, almost always readers, and those spending longer with the publication, reading more of it and picking it up on a larger number of occasions. This led me to consider several issues which the present paper hopes to clarify: Quality of reading is measured up to a point in many surveys, including official national ones, but there is seldom time for more than a few dimensions to be included and, to say the least, these are usually controversial. There is no agreed best practice, and different parties have different interests. Too often we fall back on qualitative research which is interesting and often colourful but which canât clearly indicate priorities. What this paper will try to do is to suggest how, at least in a subscriber survey (in this case one originally designed for editorial purposes), it is possible to quantify in part the relationship between the components of reading and interest in both editorial and advertising and the image of the publication on a number of characteristics.
The marketing term "FMCG" stands for "fast moving consumer goods" which are usually exemplified by grocery products such as baked beans or detergents. It is however obvious that few product areas provide such excellent examples of FMCG as the newspaper market. The product is typically purchased every day (or in the case of Sundays, every week) by the million, and the perishability is extreme (the demand for yesterdayâs newspaper not being extremely high). This may be contrasted with a sector such as detergents which are typically purchased monthly and can be stored for long periods. The significance of regarding newspapers as archetypal FMCG products is that the FMCG sector has been much studied by marketing experts and there is a large body of analysis about the best marketing strategies to be deployed in typical competitive situations. This kind of analysis has in the past hardly ever been applied to newspaper markets which have been assumed to concern very special products with unique relationships to their consumers ("our loyal readership"). Recently in the UK this simple view of newspaper purchasers as loyal readers, not fickle consumers, has been called into question, largely as a result of initiatives from Rupert Murdochâs News International, which will be discussed in more detail below. The use of such techniques however makes it easier to make comparisons between developments in the newspaper sector and in more conventional FMCG markets.
Magazines have a unique characteristic, which is an advantage that no other media can display : the particular link between a reader and "his" magazine : to read a magazine means more than just to be in contact with a media, it means a personal involvement, an "effort" to go to a magazine store and buy it, that presupposes there is a starting point adequacy between the reader and the title, that they share ideas and a specific vision of the world, that this magazine has been chosen because of the way of life of the reader, his political or personal convictions, his centers of interest, his leisures... the magazine is a caution that reinforces his system of values, information, convictions. All this makes advertising in magazines a challenge: advertising should fit with all these requirements neither to disappoint the reader nor to make him feel negatively while reading, if all conditions are full-filled, advertising will benefit from the positive environment of the magazine readership and be much more effective.
The paper will briefly present the electronic testmarket GfK-BehaviorScan. Two cases will show, how print advertising and TV advertising integrated in a media mix and enbedded in a complex marketing mix scenario, supported the market success of both a new and an established brand. The next part is concerned with the overview on a new technique in media research: the single-source-use of consumer behaviour and TV-audience data. The single-source- instrument MediaScan offers media planners the opportunity to analyse the media behaviour of different target groups. With the help of this combination, media planning can be optimized by using the TV contents of the environment that buyers of a brand actually prefer. The paper will finish with an outlook of the chances that the instrument offers for the application in the area of magazines.
For many years UK national newspapers have published additional sections given away with the main newspaper and while these were few and in the form of colour magazines, they were measured as separate titles. In 1988 the power of the press unions was severely curbed and this created a surge of additional sections of all shapes and sizes, some of which were quite short lived, being very much subject to the whim of editorial control, in fighting for a place in a highly competitive market place. Many of the new, unmeasured sections carry very large amounts of display advertising revenue, some of them as much as the larger magazines measured by the NRS and many of them much more than the smaller magazine titles measured. This being the case advertisers and agencies have been demanding a direct measure of their readership for many years. The demand is easy to make, a solution is difficult to find - politics, finance and technical difficulties - all must be overcome. This paper explains the difficulties, charts the actions and investigations of NRS in attempting to find a solution to supplying useful measures or guidance on readership of sections for its users. It will talk about alternative routes that have been considered, from low cost research that might give indications of readership to high cost solutions that would get as close to a realistic measure as is possible, within the present state of the art. It will assess the desirability of these possibilities within the needs of the UK marketplace. The problem has not been solved but NRS thinking is developing week by week, the paper will report on where we have got to at the time of the seminar and how the issue in might be dealt with by NRS in the future.