Abstract:

The state of understanding of the effects of print advertising is not as clearly developed as that for TV. This reflects the much more complicated nature of press exposure and the difficulties which that in turn presents for looking at advertising effects. There are a number of reasons why understanding of TV is further advanced, but there is one key one. It is possible with TV to relate advertising effects to the timing of exposure. In press you can look at the effects but it has been problematic to look at when exposure to an execution occurs. In June 1990 we conducted 1,883 interviews with women aged 15+, collecting data that has allowed us to build a picture of how any given press schedule will build exposures over time. The lag in exposure for some types of publication is quite substantial. Ad agencies in the UK now have access to the software which allows them to look at their plans over time. In June 1991 we conducted 1,925 interviews amongst men which completed the picture of how exposure builds over time - extending both the target audience and the range of publications we can look at. This will be added to the database and software at the beginning of 1992. We are now in a position to relate exposures to effects and during the course of 1991 we are interviewing 17,5 women in a client-funded study called MagTrak to examine this relationship. We can do this using a computer modelling programme which we have been using for television executions for the past 12 years. This will allow us to examine a hypothesis that we have developed from examination of existing press tracking studies - that after a certain number of exposures, the effect of a press execution diminishes, i.e. it begins to wear out. All these studies have potential far reaching implications for the planning of press schedules. This paper describes the steps we have taken so far, the findings they have produced and the questions we will be able to answer when the 1991 MagTrak experiment is completed