Dec.
 2004

Circulation or readership?

As the debate rages on about the validity and value of circulation data, in many countries, readership has been the main yardstick measuring newspapers’ value.

After all, no one would think of measuring TV’s audience by the number of TV sets. To cloak a newspaper’s value to advertisers in the form of circulation is equally as ludicrous.

The traditional method of measuring readership is cheap and easy to produce, for large and small publishers alike.

The bad news, however, is that ad agencies are far from happy with the current data, and senior media buyers have been complaining for years that the internationally accepted measure of readership is inadequate.

They are right.

How it’s done

Readership is currently measured in a similar fashion in virtually every market in the world. Survey respondents are offered a list of titles and asked to identify the ones they have read in the last year. They are asked how often they read it in a recent period, and whether they read it “yesterday” or a longer-ago period.

The percentage of the sample who read “yesterday” is assumed to represent the population of the area, and provides the “average issue readership” of the title.

The frequency question is used to calculate how many other people read over time, thereby providing the basis for calculating reach and frequency of a schedule of one or more titles.

Such information can be broken down into target groups, such as men aged 15 to 34 or new car owners, etc., depending on the size and quality of the sample. Such surveys are generally reported once, twice or four times a year.

Must change

So what is wrong with that?

Everything, according to the media buyers. They argue that such data fails to provide details of who is likely to read an advertisement. To provide a figure about who reads a newspaper over a period of time, is equivalent - they say - to a broadcaster providing a general picture of the TV station’s audience, rather than the viewing figures for a particular time slot or program.

If a TV advertising salesperson turned up at a media buyer’s office with only top line figures on a TV station’s overall audience, he or she would be thrown out.

What media buyers want from newspaper ad salespeople is the print equivalent of a program’s audience research: Who reads which page, and on which day.

Not difficult

Fortunately for newspapers, collecting adequate page readership data is relatively easy and cheap.

However, publishers are concerned that since the readership levels of a specific page of a newspaper are inevitably lower than those of the entire paper, advertisers will insist on paying less.

This is nonsense.

In Denmark and the Netherlands, there have been a number of experiments to provide media buyers with this kind of data.

Granted, they have not succeeded, but it isn’t because of the price an advertiser will pay for an ad in the newspaper. It’s because newspapers and media buyers have yet to strike an accord how to interpret the data.

The solution? Ensure that all parties agree how to interpret the data in advance.

The fact that readership information is still lacking has fueled the emergence of another problem: Media buyers are carrying out their own research.

I recently undertook a project for one agency where its own data showed accurately who read what parts of different newspapers, and even how different categories and sizes of advertisements worked in different parts of each newspaper in the market.

Flatfooted

When newspaper salespeople arrived to make their pitch, they were caught flatfooted as media buyers shared the research they had already compiled. These newspaper salespeople were in o position to negotiate on price since they had nothing to counter the agency’s arguments.

What’s more, the media buyer’s data indicated that what had previously been considered the market’s weaker titles in fact had strong readership.

Finally, the data revealed the relative benefits stemming from each ad’s specific size. This, too, resulted in changes in the tactics media buyers planned their advertising.

Throughout this entire experience, the newspaper’s salespeople remained blissfully ignorant.

Arguably, it’s difficult to move from a market in which negotiations are based on average issue readership to one pegged to daily page readership.

Different picture

But what if you are operating in a market where readership data is not currently widely used? Then the picture is very different and newspapers have a major opportunity to demonstrate to media buyers the fantastic range of page environments that exist within every newspapers.

Advertisers can then be directed to the part of the paper where they will reach the people they want to reach and where their advertisements are most likely to work.

I say “most likely” because of course there are more and more pressures on media buyers and media owners to be paid on the basis of results.

Many major advertisers pay their advertising agencies on the basis of the sales results they achieve, and the media buyers are keen to force this process onto the media owners.

All very well, except that advertising effectiveness is dependent on two things, the effectiveness of the medium and the effectiveness of the ad itself.

Second question

Measuring page readership helps answer the second part of that equation.

I can promise you that too many advertisements don’t work. Not because they appear in a newspaper but because they are badly designed. Many ads created by the biggest and most famous names in the advertising world are ineffective.

Can newspapers be held responsible for that? However, armed with the appropriate research we can easily be in a position to go back to the advertiser and tell them why their ad might not work.

In my days as a publisher, such knowledge proved to be one of the most powerful ways to sell to any advertiser, large or small.

At a time when TV audiences are fragmenting and there are more and more threats to TV advertising from devices that record programs and skip the ads, newspapers are well placed to re-establish themselves as the new mass-market medium.

Yet we are burdened by a lack of data about our effectiveness as a medium.

Now is the time when investment in proper newspaper readership data, by section and page, is most likely to draw advertising back into newspapers.

We should be confident that our medium is so effective and that our readers are so valuable that we out-shout all of our competitors.

Jim Chisholm is a consultant and strategy adviser to the World Association of Newspapers and director of the association’s “Shaping the Future of the Newspaper” project, which looks at strategic developments and best practices in the newspaper industry. He can be contacted at jim.chisholm@futureofthenewspaper.com