Magazines Dominate Online Search And Purchase
Phil Cutts, director of marketing, PPA Marketing, looks at how magazines form a key part in stimulating consumers’ online behaviour, as the importance of online search and purchase grows.
In a fast-changing and increasingly volatile media environment, it is no longer enough to just develop multi-media campaigns. Advertisers and agencies need to understand exactly how the different components work alongside each other in order to get the best return on their marketing investment.
This need for greater insight into the symbiotic relationship between various media is exactly why PPA Marketing commissioned research into the ability of offline media to drive online search and purchase.
Magazines have a strong relationship with readers and are targeted, making content and advertising relevant to that readership. We know the editing of choice that goes on in magazines helps consumers make purchase decisions, so it seems reasonable to say that, as online search and purchase grows in importance, magazines would form a key part in stimulating consumers’ online behaviour.
More and more research coming out of the US demonstrates that magazines create strong connections between consumers and their online behaviour. Indeed, in August, iProspect released research into the behaviour of online audiences saying that 67% of the online population were driven to search by offline channels. iProspect said that around 39% of searchers influenced by offline media made a purchase online as a consequence, concluding that magazines and WOM were the most effective drivers of online purchase.
Furthermore, research from the Retail Advertisers Marketing Association (RAMA) in the US concluded that magazines were the primary driver of online search, a fact supported by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) whose research showed that magazines are the primary driver of online web traffic.
Working alongside BMRB, we decided to see if what was true in America was true in the UK. Using a sample of some 3,000 online adults, with an age range between 16 and 64, we looked at online search, purchasing behaviour and the offline media that had generated that behaviour. We also looked more specifically into different product categories to see whether search and purchase was the same for each.
We found that 70% of online adults had been prompted to search by offline advertising of one sort or another. We found that, as in the US, TV and magazines dominated the offline driving of online search.
However, it changed slightly when we looked by category. Whilst television beat magazines into a close second place in certain categories such as cars and home appliances, for cosmetics, clothing and travel, magazines were just as strong at driving online search as TV. So magazine and TV advertising would appear to drive search across all product categories.
But what about the most important part of the research, that of purchasing power? Is it true to say that a significant percentage of those driven to search by offline media actually make a purchase online? Again, you may not be surprised to find out that this is the case. Indeed it is even truer in the UK than in the US. Nearly 60% of online adults are making purchases online as a result of seeing offline advertising. If we look at that more closely we find it is great news for magazines – they are equal to television in their ability to generate online purchasing amongst adults and ABC1 adults.
Realistically we know that magazines can’t win everything! TV is better than magazines at generating online purchase amongst men – just! On the flip side, magazines have a similarly slight advantage over TV in driving women’s online purchasing. Whatever way you skin it – either by class, sex or age, you can’t put a paper width of distance between television and magazines’ ability to drive online purchase.
Offline advertising does indeed generate online search and purchase. No massive surprise. What is a little more surprising is that magazine and TV dominate that driving of online search and that magazine advertising is likely to be the most cost efficient means of generating online search through offline media.
As far as purchasing is concerned, we find there is no difference between the ability of magazines to generate online purchase compared to television. Indeed in over 70% of the product categories that we assessed, magazines appear to be the primary driver of online purchase.
Magazines continue to thrive. These significant online findings build on the already compelling argument for advertisers to invest in magazines. As the media landscape changes, driven by not-yet-invented technology and consumer behaviour, magazines will undoubtedly be found to be an important part of the marketing mix as they are interesting and engaging – attributes that can never be out of date.