MRI Rolls Out First Ad Ratings for Magazines

more made up metrics for a declining industry.

1. MRI survey's suck to begin with - they give consumers a couple of bucks to fill out an ENCYCLOPEDIC survey - if it were me, I'd be checking off whatever as quick as possible to get my money without really caring - REAL consumers especially between the ages of 18-34 who have enough time to fill these things out aren't quality advertising targets becuase if they have that much free timemthey probably live in trailers or are rich and rich people don't need an extra $50 or whatever to fill out some stupid survey. 2. Smart media buyers know Starch stats are never accurate 3. Finally let's be honest - of all ad mediums - print is the LEAST effective! That doesn't mean it's not a viable option - but you can't compare it to subways ads! Print ads that are effective work because the creatives that engineered them understand the relationship between magazines and their readers - more often than not the art directors are clueless to this fact and create cookie-cutter generic ads that look the same for Vanity Fair as they do for Maxim.

What is the turn around time for something like this? Will you have the results from your June 2009 issue in time to adjust your next campaign with the findings? This is a lovely idea, but will it really be useful?

Jacky probably never reads magazines (or any print, for that matter). The reality is that impressions do not equate to action in any medium. This numbers race is all due to poor media buying all the way around and lazy "spoonshovel me" analysis. To dismiss print so cavalierly is an epidemic without logic. You are not going to build a brand of any style, quality or exclusivity without a selective print component.

Finally, someone is addressing the "real" issue impacting declinging ad spend. Advertising effectiveness is about the ad design, ad layout and ad copy. If you buy an 8 page center spread in the 10 best rated magazines or newspapers in the country and I design the ads that are placed on those 8 pages, I can assure you that nobody will know the name of the advertiser, what product they are promoting, their phone#, URL or email address "IF" only two words appear on each page...."CALL ME". That we know nobody would do that but it does make the point. It's what goes on those 8 pages that determine the ultimate effectiveness of the ad space purchased. It's about time publishers come to this realization and fight back to educate the agency and marketing department of advertiser. While this may not be best solution, it's at least a step in the right direction. Jackie, I wonder who taught you what you know and how to communicate with others?

Several things to consider before you decide whether you're willing to buy into what MRI's new AdMeasure service is selling... THE FIRST THING TO CONSIDER The Starch Ad Readership survey heavily relies upon people "accurately remembering" whether they actually saw a specific ad in a particular magazine issue, how much of that ad they actually read, and then very detailed specifics about that particular ad's clarity, information value, believability and persuasiveness. If a magazine has a 100 page issue with a 50%/50% ad/edit ratio that would mean that Starch is expecting a reader to clearly remember a ton of info about 50 pages of various sizes/types of ads -- and, most importantly, to clearly recall all of this superfluous detail from a magazine issue that they may have casually read "several weeks" ago! Is there even "one person on this entire planet" capable of remembering that many details from a casual read of a magazine several weeks ago? Considering that most people have a tough time recalling what they ate for lunch yesterday, that's got to be highly questionable. And since most magazine readers will typically read several titles a month, these readers are also expected to keep all of this detailed ad readership information "correctly sorted" to each of the titles they've read -- until Starch eventually contacts them out of the blue! Gimme a break! THE SECOND THING TO CONSIDER The Starch Ad Readership survey uses "a small Internet sample" through a Web e-panel. Using an e-panel is a major shortcoming of this research. Most Web panels actively solicit people to join their panel -- or, in other words, to "volunteer" themselves to be included in future surveys. That's always a poor and inadequate substitute for having the survey process scientifically select people from the population being surveyed. Without scientific sampling, there's "no projectability". And without projectability, Starch's Web e-panel is probably delivering data that doesn't represent 99% of a magazine's readers. Many years ago the ARF published a position paper on "Phony or Misleading Polls" which stated "In a research survey, the study selects the respondent. The goal is to generate information from a sample that is projectable to a defined population. In a call-in, write-in, or volunteer survey, the respondent selects the survey. Any survey with a self-selected respondent base is really no survey at all because it lacks a sample selected according to statistical principals. The reporting of call-in, write-in, or volunteer polls as if they were the same as valid survey research is unacceptable." Of course, Starch isn't the only research company aggressively using Web e-panels -- this methodology has become quite pervasive throughout the media industry since it's so cheap and quick to do. It's just a shame that so many research buyers have forgotten to ask these critical questions "Does the data collected have any validity or reliability? Does it actually mean anything?" THE THIRD THING TO CONSIDER Can the AdMeasure’s ad ratings be accurately projected to a total audience via MRI’s syndicated media survey? When MRI is searching the U.S. population for readers of a particular magazine, someone could read a particular title for "less than a minute" and yet still be screened-in as a legitimate reader. It's "a huge leap of faith" to accept projecting the Starch e-panel data to MRI syndicated data that's often based on a few hundred respondents who "claim readership" of a particular magazine title, and who, in many instances, may have spent less than a minute skimming that title. How many ads in an issue could those respondents have possibly seen, read, and remembered in less than a minute? Even if they spent 10 to 15 minutes with that title as a pass-along reader -- how many ads could they have possibly read and remembered? In all likelihood, probably hardly any at all. TO SUM UP Starch's AdMeasure claims to report on a ton of ad-specific info for a particular magazine title, that's collected from e-panel readers who likely don't truly represent that magazine's readership. And who, in turn, are trying to remember what they may (or may not) have read in that magazine from several weeks earlier. And to then not confuse that particular title's ad readership data with that of any of their other recently read titles where they might have seen the same ads. And lastly, this data is then projected to a U.S. total audience figure for that magazine based on readers who may not have hardly spent any time reading that title. If you're buying into any of this -- hey, would you also like to buy a bridge in Brooklyn? And by-the-way I'm a big believer in the value of print. Most magazines do an incredible job for most of their advertisers. I just have trouble accepting questionable research.

Can someone please remind me how TV measures how consumers note, or take action on ads based on the show/daypart where the ad is placed? Are we confident that the consumer can remember what show they were watching paired with a particular ad? I applaud MRI for taking the initiative to support further research, however, I do think that they should be prepared to answer the question of reliable research.