Abstract:

The main purpose of post-tests of magazine ads is evaluating how successful ads are in their communication task with magazine readers. Magazine readers, on the other hand, are quantified and analysed by means of readership surveys. One could, therefore, expect, through these two approaches, an evaluation of the audience effectively reached by a given magazine ad. Current methods, unfortunately, use different readers's definitions for post-tests and for readership surveys. Post-tests are conducted very few days after the publication date, on people who have finished reading their copy, whereas in readership surveys people are qualified as readers who looked at any copy during a qualifying period (recent reading technique) or people who have read a particular issue shown several weeks after the publication date (life old issue technique).