Helping To Control The Business – New Research Solutions (Part Two)

Mike Baker, Advertisement Marketing Controller at IPC delivered the award- winning paper of the Conference, “Researching specialist or small-scale audiences – The IPC Experience”.

He began by highlighting that specialist or minority media suffer in terms of research; ie cable has no BARB data, radio has little product data and regional press has to graft together media owner research. There are both financial and political reasons for this problem. The Internet, for example, is a new problem. Registration, which is becoming a standard way of measuring audiences is, said Mike Baker, already causing him fatigue.

But even if enough research data exists, if you are selling a very specialist audience, it is still hard to arouse the interests of a media-planner/buyer with mainstream products to place. He highlighted this by saying that a very large specialist audience is people over the age of 65; 20% of the UK population, who are rich with money to spend. Yet they are often ignored by planners; he suggested a special old people’s media buying shop run by old people themselves

For the purposes of IPC’s research, specialist magazines were defined as any which were not mainstream women’s or general entertainment. Men’s general interest magazines were included as they are still only read by 10-15% of the male population.

Of the 181 magazines on the NRS, 77 are general and the remainder 104 are specialist. Therefore the majority of specialist magazines, well over a thousand titles, remain uncovered. Yet time spent reading is swinging in favour of specialist rather than general reading. So they wanted answers to some fundamental questions with regard to the whole medium of specialist magazines, not just IPC titles; Who reads them, what is the size of the universe, and how do readers use the title and the advertising, and especially between specialist and general ads, ie how do you feel when you are reading your golfing magazine and you come across a car or drinks ad.

The first part of the research was discussions with advertiser clients and agencies. Advantages highlighted by them were targetting, share of voice, and reader relationship. The next stage was reader focus groups, where readers even suggested different sorts of advertising they might have expected but did not actually see, ie readers of golf magazines specifically mentioned isotonic drinks, and Mars bars.

The quantitative side of the research was more difficult; a question was put via the RSGB Access panel which questioned 49,000 individuals. This question asked about readership in the past year, of any of 24 different specialist magazine categories. The research found that 78% of males questioned had read at least one in the past year. So had 69% of adults and 61% of women. As a sweeping generalisation, readers of specialist magazines are young, male, upmarket and southern-based.

Men’s style magazines have the highest proportion of men reading them, with 89% of the readers being male; then it was angling and classic cars, at 87%, with railways close behind at 85%. Equestrian magazines have the highest female profile, at 72%. Science and technology titles are the most upmarket, followed by yachting.

The fourth wave of research was conducted through RSL; this looked at the market less widely, but more deeply. Eight sectors were concentrated on covering 91 titles. Average Issue Readership figures came out at very similar levels to the NRS. Respondents were mailed again, with title questionnaires, product usage and lifestyle questions. This research is not yet finished, but initial findings show that as the best source of information on the specialist subject, specialist magazines score top in every sector except football, where television scores highly; radio comes very close in music.

Three quarters read more than half or all of their specialist magazine; time spent reading a typical issue varies between 68 minutes for rugby titles and 107 minutes for men’s style. The average number of separate pick-ups is 5.

Also, they read the ads. Specialist ads are often a reason for buying, so specialist ads score highest. For golf titles, 75% read the specialist ads, 37% read the classified ads and 29% admit to reading ads for general consumer products. The shape is the same for each sector, just the figures different. In addition there is a clear sense of endorsement that comes out of the titles.

Jennie Beck, of the Beck Consultancy gave details of the research into newspaper sections readership, Sections 95, the joint research between Leo Burnett, Express Newspapers and the Central Office of Information.

Actual issues were used for the research. This meant that by asking respondents what they normally read together with the actual issues, a comparison of what they say they normally do with what they actually did that weekend was possible.

Findings of the research included that the introduction of all the review sections has not affected the main colour magazines in terms of patronage, but the main difference between the two formats comes with time spent reading. Colour magazines fare worse here. Jennie Beck highlighted what lessons Sections 95 holds for the current industry research problems into readership of newspaper sections:

• Sections should all be taken off the main NRS; at the moment there are some magazines on the NRS, but not any review sections, yet their research shows that review sections are read well.
• Which quality of reading measures work best? The disappointment if not available question works well.
• The importance of Specific Issure Measurement. Their research showed there is evidence to show that readers underestimate the time spent on the minority sections of papers unless they see the actual copy.

Andrew Roberts of Taylor Nelson AGB ended the Conference with his paper on “The Measurement of TV Advertising Sales Effects using Consumer Panel Data.” He began by detailing the advantages of using data fusion (Mediaspan) or using a single source (TV Span) to measure TV ad sales effects. Fusion has its limitations; with TV Span you know exactly which spots each household would have been exposed to. He maintained the issue is not which one is best, it is which is the more appropriate.

Mediaspan fusion shows the magnitude of short term sales effects; these are highly variable, from 1.5% to 40%. The biggest increase comes from new brands or those which have been relaunched; this shows that advertising is at its most effective when there is something new to say.

In terms of effective frequency, there are diminishing returns to repeated exposure for established brands (If it is a new product or new message, then repeating is positive; if it is established then a frequency of more than one week is not of benefit.)

TV Span provides specific data. There are 750 Superpanel homes in the Meridian area. Each has a TV Set meter plus a scanner for fmcg goods; this means each household’s exposure to an ad campaign can be worked out against what they have actually purchased. As to how accurate TV Span will be for the campaign depends on the number of purchase records there are from the 750 homes. Therefore this works better on the bigger brands; the bigger the brand, the more detailed the data.

The final panel session of the conference saw Erhard Meier of RSL taking issue with Jennie Beck for suggesting that the NRS should not attempt the section research; she responded that the work the NRS is doing is limited, only covering the magazines and review sections, and there is no specific issue data.