Abstract:

People do not separate neatly into regular readers of a publication and non-readers; some read issues occasionally. This paper shows that it is important to collect data on the regularity of reading, and to know how many people read none of the issues in which a series of advertisements has been placed, how many read just one issue, how many read two and so on. This information is called an exposure distribution. Different models describing this situation have been proposed by Agostini, Prankel, Hyett and Politz. The paper suggests another flexible family of models, which has certain advantages. It shows how the models can be used to help in choosing between publications. The advertiser's real concern, even more than this information, lies in the exposure distribution for all the issues on his schedule of different publications. The paper indicates a way in which this joint exposure distribution can be estimated when the two publications duplicate normally and perhaps even when they do not.