Coming, a new way to size up magazines

Coming, a new way
to size up magazines

ABC service to evaluate readership profiles

By Gabriel Spitzer

    When it comes to magazines too small or too new to be measured by MRI, every buyer knows there are subscriber studies they can look at.
   Just how reliable they are is another issue, though.
    Rightly or wrongly, such research is assumed to speak to the interests of whoever's paying for it.
    But soon, rather than relying on a magazine’s good faith for accurate and unbiased research, media buyers will be able to turn to an independent third party.
    The Audit Bureau of Circulations has just completed the alpha test for its Magazine Subscriber Profile Audit Report, a service that the ABC claims will give buyers and advertisers an easy and impartial way to compare readerships, in a standardized format.
    Some buyers think it's a needed service.
    "We all crave universality--having one format and one report for the majority, if not all publications," says Valerie Muller, director of print services at Mediacom.
    "Any time it’s not third-party research, you’d expect it to highlight only positive things. That doesn’t mean they’re lying or holding back the truth. It's just that, understandably, they’re presenting only the things that are in their favor."
   To remedy that issue, the ABC is developing a set of common standards for everything from survey-sample selection to the phrasing of the questions subscribers are asked.
    The ABC will then commission a third party to conduct the actual research, usually a syndicated research company like MRI or another independent researcher, with ABC auditing the results.
   The ABC hopes to be in beta tests by this fall and have the full service up and running shortly thereafter.
    Media people will be able to access the service at no cost.
    Guideposts magazine agreed to serve as guinea pig for the ABC’s trial.
    "From my perspective, it was painless," says Janine Scolpino, publisher of Guideposts magazine.
    For Guideposts, the survey sample was drawn by the ABC and then forwarded to MRI. MRI performed the actual research according to the ABC’s guidelines and did the tabulation. Meanwhile, the ABC performed a real-time audit of each step, and finished by placing its stamp of approval on the report.
     Scolpino says the response from advertisers was swift.
    "Even before the report was released, word got out, and we started to get phone calls from agency and client people wanting to understand what it was all about.
   "We’ve had great, great interest, and we’ve gotten a number of really good potential advertisers," she says.
    In Guideposts’ case, the results confirmed what the magazine’s own research had found before, according to Scolpino.
    But that may not be true for every magazine, she adds.
   "It’s troubling to me that more publishers haven’t stepped up to do this.
    "Maybe they’re worried that the results will be different than what they’ve been presenting. For a media buyer, I think that would put up a bit of a red flag," she says.
    "Here you have an advertising community who is saying to publishers, this is what we want from you, and then no one is stepping forward. I find that curious."
    Media research people should welcome the ABC’s service as well, after years of trying to decipher each magazine’s research methodology and comparing everything from the size of the sample to the size of the font on a questionnaire.
    "The current methodology is kind of suspect. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but all magazines want to be young and upscale, and not all of them are," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media.
    Media researchers will be able to peruse a standardized list of demographic information, including age, level of education, employment status, income, marital status and household composition.
    In addition, individual magazines can opt to include information about readers’ loyalty, preferences and buying habits.
    Judging by Guideposts’ results, it is this optional information that has piqued advertisers’ early interest.
    "The demo information is not generally the part that’s suspect survey to survey," says Mediacom’s Muller.
    "The qualitative information is the stuff that really helps drive decisions. And it’s also the information that, depending on how the questions are asked, can alter responses much more."
    But at least one media director believes that the new service, while certainly an improvement, misses the point.
    "It’s another smoke bomb in the room," says Don Cole, executive vice president and media director at Fletcher Martin Ewing in Atlanta.
    "The world is full of 25-year-old media planners who are kind of gutless. I don’t think people are evaluating publications, particularly editorial content, as much as they should. To me it’s sidestepping the core issue.
    "It’s nice to have somebody doing this, but people aren’t doing enough work on print planning. It could just become another crutch for people.
    "It does help some. The only problem is the more characteristics you add to a survey, the weaker the data."

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

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