News International Outlines Readership Study
A survey of 17 respondents, shut in a room, awaiting the opportunity to participate in some TV programme research with a camera attached to their heads and a copy of the Sun and Times in front of them. It doesn’t seem on the face of it to be the most standard (or likely) way to produce a relevant and revealing piece of research. But – largely – it did.
This was News International in association with research academic Robert Heath, analysing how newspapers are read (supplements were not included in the survey) – and how attention levels compare with those when watching TV programmes and advertisements.
Certainly, the respondents were “duped” slightly – just told to get used to the head-pieces by reading the available papers, not realising this was the main part of the study – but that was not a failing, and did not appear to influence the outcomes.
The camera recorded the eye’s viewing precisely, enabling NI to illustrate not just the amount of time spent looking at advertisements in the Sun and Times, but also how the eye scans the page, sometimes returning to advertisement copy, sometimes to the brand and then the copy and sometimes skipping it quickly, or completely.
The study found that:
ˇ DPS and full pages were read more than broken space in editorial
ˇ Positioning of brand identity as close as possible to the expected path of gaze had clear benefits.
The test also took in TV. The example shown at the conference was of an episode of Frasier, and showed less attentiveness, and the eyes wandering. From many hours of analysis, Stuart Corke, strategic planning director of NI, and Robert Heath drew a number of conclusions about the comparable focus on print and TV advertising. According to Heath:
ˇ Sun editorial fixations ranged from 1.16 to 3.61 times the fixations for the TV viewing.
ˇ Times editorial fixations from 0.93 to 2.98 times those for TV.
ˇ Newspaper advertisement fixation speed ranged from 1.48 to 3.75 times that for TV programmes.
ˇ Faster eye movements when looking at newsprint indicated high attention processing.
ˇ Press advertisements were gaining up to seven times the attention of the TV advertisements in the research.
The comparisons were a key part of the presentation, illustrating where newsprint can win over TV. But unfortunately the research, or maybe just the presentation of it, came in for some criticism from representatives of TV companies in the audience for not factoring in that medium’s audio strength as well, nor allowing a wider choice of programming to be viewed. However, Heath did point out the fact that some TV advertising actually works better at low levels of attention.
From the few clips we were shown – and the other hours of data and video NI have compiled – those taking part certainly focused more attentively on the newsprint – and the level of focus, and the way that the eyes scan the page provides some fascinating and very useful material in itself for NI to use with agencies and advertisers to create more effective press advertising – and potentially to draw more revenue to their titles.
This is expensive research, taking a week to calibrate an hour of video data, and is not unique, but it provides some genuinely useful insight and NI is rightly determined to take it further.
MRG: www.mrg.org.uk
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