Magazine industry gears up for the release of new effectiveness research
Marius Cloete, head of research at the PPA, on today’s milestone for the PPA: As this article is published, the PPA Marketing Board (composed of senior commercial representatives from the major consumer publishers) will take the final decisions on how we roll out the results from our AdMeasure Project...
In recent months the PPA has engaged with a number of key agency stakeholders from planning, buying and research disciplines on our planned research initiatives for 2011.
What’s become quite apparent during this time is that there is a distinct appetite among both agencies and their clients for meaningful effectiveness research with practical application and, possibly more importantly, that there generally appears to be a lack of research conforming to these criteria coming from media owners and their respective trade organisations.
The message to the PPA is clear: If we want our research to be impactful it needs to move beyond rhetoric on the merits of one medium over another and should instead focus on providing potential users with transparent results and the appropriate tools to draw their own conclusions on how the data (and medium) can best be used in planning campaigns which deliver against their objectives.
Today marks a rather important milestone for the PPA on the research front. As this article is published, the PPA Marketing Board (composed of senior commercial representatives from the major consumer publishers) will take the final decisions on how we roll out the results from our AdMeasure Project.
In summary the AdMeasure Project is a new magazine advertising effectiveness study using the GfK MRI StarchMetrix methodology, which has been successfully deployed in the US and is fast establishing itself as a key measurement and trading tool.
The parameters of the UK study are rather impressive itself. During the past four months we’ve conducted more than 130 surveys, interviewed over 17,000 respondents and measured the impact of approximately 3,300 individual ad pages appearing in the 96 titles which participated.
At its very core AdMeasure is a noting and reading study, which measures how many confirmed gross exposures each ad or campaign delivers but then moves further to investigate what outcomes were achieved as a result.
In particular the study measures whether the respondent:
- conducted further research into the product
- visited the brand’s website
- engaged others in discussion about the product
- recommended the product
- is considering purchasing the product
- has already purchased the product
- has changed their view of the product as a result of seeing the ad
On top of providing an overview of how magazines perform as a medium, the results can of course then be analysed at individual title or genre level, by product category, individual brands or competitive sets.
What I find most impressive about this study though is the unprecedented level of co-operation and participation we’ve seen from our members on this project. It has confirmed that magazine publishers have an unwavering belief in the ability of their products to make significant contributions to any media campaign and their willingness to back up this belief by moving beyond rhetoric and providing an accessible, transparent tool to measure and assess effectiveness.
PS. Results from the study will be released at the end of June 2011