I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you"
Friedrich Nietzsche (German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture, 1844-1900.)
BoSacks Speaks Out: "Trust but Verify"?
You can draw your own conclusions here, but I say that the claims of 50 engaged readers per public copy is at the heart of some of our circulation problems. In Doctor's waiting rooms people are not relaxed. They are not lounging with carefree time. They are thinking about the Doctor, the problems, the pains that they are there to fix, some times big and some times small.
Distracted from their problems perhaps, . . . totally engaged by a magazine they found on a table . . . ?
Whatever Happened to "Trust but Verify"?
By Kristina Joukhadar
http://www.circman.com/viewmedia.asp? prmMID=3097&prmID=1
"Trust but verify." That was the consensus at the Joint Panel of Buyers and Sellers at the annual Audit Bureau of Circulations conference last November when the category of verified circulation was officially introduced.
Yet some circulators told CM they were holding their breath, waiting for advertisers to request rebates on verified circulation. One of the main topics at a subsequent ABC panel of circulators and agency execs, chaired by media consultant and veteran journalist Karlene Lukovitz, was the value of public place circulation and how it was perceived by advertisers.
On that panel, Rebecca McPheters referred to the research her company had done in conjunction with Time Inc., which documented the fact that public place copies have 30 to 50 readers per copy-and that these are people in waiting rooms who are totally engaged with the magazine.
"Any source has a wide range in quality," McPheters said at that time, "it all depends on how engaged the readers are. Public place represents a multiple of the readers you get with subscriptions or newsstand copies. No source category is [inherently] good or bad-the ultimate value is to reach engaged readers with the demographics you want to reach."
In these previous discussions, many circulators have been concerned that advertisers and their agencies would use the verified circulation category as an excuse to knock down the value of circulation and therefore the advertising price.
Or, as one outspoken circ director said over a year ago, "It just gives advertisers another club to beat us over the head with." Based on the comments in this week's article in Advertising Age ("Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk"), this is exactly what's happening.
Robin Steinberg of MediaVest speaks in the article about the use of verified circulation, saying "we believe the proper use [of verified circ] is not taking place, and the current use is to make up for rate base under- delivery from newsstand decline."
But if newsstand sales figures can fluctuate by as much as 20 percent from issue to issue, isn't this a "catch-22"? Does it mean circulation must always be 20 percent higher than rate base in case the newsstand sales dip on a particular issue?
Who will pay for the overage? Will the advertisers pay a premium for the number of copies over rate base? Or would they prefer to wait for a six-month average, as is now the case with the ABC Audit Reports?
The reasoning behind advertiser/agency requests for issue-by-issue guarantees of circ that does not fluctuate, is said to be based on all the competition from online media, where the ad charges are based on page views and click throughs. However, as we have seen over the past few months, the measurement of the online numbers is not at all transparent.
Circulation/audience measurement and reader engagement are complex concepts to master in any medium. We believe circulators and their publishers are doing everything in their power to provide accuracy and transparency for their advertisers.
The necessary tools and metrics are just not there yet. And until they are, it is encumbent on all the parties involved to verify, yes, but verify with trust.
Showing posts with label circulations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label circulations. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Hail to the power of print
"I am easily satisfied with the very best."
Winston Churchill
Hail to the power of print
By Gavin K O'Reilly
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2537371.e ce
Don't believe all you're being told about the death of the press: more people all over the world are reading newspapers. What's more, they're still a powerful medium for advertising, says Gavin O'Reilly
The chorus of disapproval for newspapers has become a global trend. These days it is nearly impossible to find a media analyst who actually reads a newspaper or who can see anything other than doom and gloom for the industry. I can present a different perspective.
Let's start with circulations, which continue to grow - and not just in India and China. Paid circulation grew globally by 1.9 per cent in 2006, with sales of 510.4 million copies a day. The number of paid-for titles is at a record 11,142, up 3.1 per cent on the previous year.
You can add to that the rapid growth in free dailies - titles such as thelondonpaper, 20 Minutes, Metro and the rest - which together distribute 40.8 million copies a day.
For those who think print is some relic of the past, newspapers and magazines are actually the largest advertising medium with a combined 42.3 per cent share of the market.
According to the accountants PwC, global newspaper advertising revenues increased by 4 per cent in 2006 and by 15.6 per cent over the past five years. Hidden within those figures is the fact that newspapers - the 2nd largest advertising medium after TV - are actually larger than the combined advertising value of radio, cinema, magazines and the Internet.
PwC predicts that by 2010 the global advertising market will grow by 6.2 per cent to $525bn (£265bn), a growth of $111bn (£56bn). Of that, newspapers will capture 18.2 per cent, second only to TV and the internet. Print (newspapers and magazines) will capture 27.4 per cent of that growth, greater than the internet.
According to the UK research company TGI, newspaper readership has grown by 2.1 per cent over the past five years, with readership among 15-24 year olds growing by 6.9 per cent and readers over 65 growing by 3.7 per cent. This counters the tired view that the newspaper readership is getting older with the important addendum that people are actually living longer.
The key to media exposure is the time that people spend reading, watching, using or listening to that particular medium.
Let's reflect on how US advertisers invest their clients' money. According to the specialist private equity fund Veronis Suhler Stevenson, for every hour of TV viewing, advertisers spend $40.1m (E20.2m). For each hour of radio they outlay $19.3m (E9.7m) and for the internet - all the time people are supposedly glued in front of their screens - advertisers only spend $65.4m (E33m).
As for newspapers, advertisers spend $316.3m (E160m) for every hour of reading, that's eight times more than TV and reflects the quality demographic that a newspaper delivers.
The media scene never stands still. It is important to see newspapers within the rapidly changing media matrix, where the fragmentation of society, new forms of media consumption and growing competition everywhere make life more challenging for the media buyer.
There is both the need for more credible information and more accurate demographic targeting of the consumer. Asked to name the biggest issue they face, 67 per cent of marketing directors cite fragmentation. Their task is even more difficult when one reflects on what is happening in TV land - the high altar for media planners. Aggregate TV viewership is not growing, whereas newspaper audiences have either grown or remained stable.
According to BARB, which monitors television audiences, UK TV viewing fell in the period March 2000-March 2007 by 1.2 per cent. In that period the UK terrestrial channels lost nearly 24 per cent of their audience.
There is no shortage of statistical data on circulations, readership, viewership, time spent online - and there are doubtless pluses and minuses in the detail. What is indisputable is that newspapers increasingly represent the mass-market medium channel of the future, delivering a large, broadly stable, reliable and definable demographic.
A crucial question is whether online exists as a threat or as an opportunity for newspaper publishers in 2007 and beyond.
One thing that we can all agree on is that online is a rapidly growing area in terms of usage, and most importantly, in terms of advertising. PwC forecast that global online advertising will grow by a compound 18.1 per cent to 2010 and be worth about $52bn (E26bn).
To me, among the real questions is: what is driving this online growth?
BRMB Internet Monitor in the UK estimates that 25 million Britons use the internet for emailing. Is this media consumption?
There are other inconsistencies in the data, that suggests that only 4 per cent of internet users regularly visit adult sites, even though this is a multi- billion dollar industry. Only 3 per cent say they regularly gamble online. Getting reliable data on actual internet usage rather than aggregate usage is near impossible.
Every industry needs to evolve and that's just as true for the newspaper industry as any other. Over the past 18 months we have seen more new title launches than at any time in our industry's history.
As for the investment made by publishers in new printing and production equipment, we stopped counting at $6bn (E3bn). From News Corporation's $1 bn (E500m) investment in the UK to papers across the USA, Europe and Asia, it's clearly a good time to be manufacturing printing presses. That investment is yielding more colour, more flexibility and significantly lower unit costs.
So I suggest there has been no paradigm shift.
Every newspaper publisher produces a product - a brand - that has the capacity to be relevant to and purchased by the modern day consumer. Our only risk is that industry inertia leads to consumer apathy.
Which is why publishers are investing behind their brands and businesses - and that of course includes online, which is all about aggregating a larger audience, not cannibalising our existing audience.
When you pull it all together, the prognosis for newspapers is actually quite different from conventional wisdom.
Gavin K O'Reilly is the president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), and is the chief operating officer of Independent News & Media plc. This is an edited version of a presentation he gave last week to an audience in London, for WAN's Capital Markets Day
Winston Churchill
Hail to the power of print
By Gavin K O'Reilly
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2537371.e ce
Don't believe all you're being told about the death of the press: more people all over the world are reading newspapers. What's more, they're still a powerful medium for advertising, says Gavin O'Reilly
The chorus of disapproval for newspapers has become a global trend. These days it is nearly impossible to find a media analyst who actually reads a newspaper or who can see anything other than doom and gloom for the industry. I can present a different perspective.
Let's start with circulations, which continue to grow - and not just in India and China. Paid circulation grew globally by 1.9 per cent in 2006, with sales of 510.4 million copies a day. The number of paid-for titles is at a record 11,142, up 3.1 per cent on the previous year.
You can add to that the rapid growth in free dailies - titles such as thelondonpaper, 20 Minutes, Metro and the rest - which together distribute 40.8 million copies a day.
For those who think print is some relic of the past, newspapers and magazines are actually the largest advertising medium with a combined 42.3 per cent share of the market.
According to the accountants PwC, global newspaper advertising revenues increased by 4 per cent in 2006 and by 15.6 per cent over the past five years. Hidden within those figures is the fact that newspapers - the 2nd largest advertising medium after TV - are actually larger than the combined advertising value of radio, cinema, magazines and the Internet.
PwC predicts that by 2010 the global advertising market will grow by 6.2 per cent to $525bn (£265bn), a growth of $111bn (£56bn). Of that, newspapers will capture 18.2 per cent, second only to TV and the internet. Print (newspapers and magazines) will capture 27.4 per cent of that growth, greater than the internet.
According to the UK research company TGI, newspaper readership has grown by 2.1 per cent over the past five years, with readership among 15-24 year olds growing by 6.9 per cent and readers over 65 growing by 3.7 per cent. This counters the tired view that the newspaper readership is getting older with the important addendum that people are actually living longer.
The key to media exposure is the time that people spend reading, watching, using or listening to that particular medium.
Let's reflect on how US advertisers invest their clients' money. According to the specialist private equity fund Veronis Suhler Stevenson, for every hour of TV viewing, advertisers spend $40.1m (E20.2m). For each hour of radio they outlay $19.3m (E9.7m) and for the internet - all the time people are supposedly glued in front of their screens - advertisers only spend $65.4m (E33m).
As for newspapers, advertisers spend $316.3m (E160m) for every hour of reading, that's eight times more than TV and reflects the quality demographic that a newspaper delivers.
The media scene never stands still. It is important to see newspapers within the rapidly changing media matrix, where the fragmentation of society, new forms of media consumption and growing competition everywhere make life more challenging for the media buyer.
There is both the need for more credible information and more accurate demographic targeting of the consumer. Asked to name the biggest issue they face, 67 per cent of marketing directors cite fragmentation. Their task is even more difficult when one reflects on what is happening in TV land - the high altar for media planners. Aggregate TV viewership is not growing, whereas newspaper audiences have either grown or remained stable.
According to BARB, which monitors television audiences, UK TV viewing fell in the period March 2000-March 2007 by 1.2 per cent. In that period the UK terrestrial channels lost nearly 24 per cent of their audience.
There is no shortage of statistical data on circulations, readership, viewership, time spent online - and there are doubtless pluses and minuses in the detail. What is indisputable is that newspapers increasingly represent the mass-market medium channel of the future, delivering a large, broadly stable, reliable and definable demographic.
A crucial question is whether online exists as a threat or as an opportunity for newspaper publishers in 2007 and beyond.
One thing that we can all agree on is that online is a rapidly growing area in terms of usage, and most importantly, in terms of advertising. PwC forecast that global online advertising will grow by a compound 18.1 per cent to 2010 and be worth about $52bn (E26bn).
To me, among the real questions is: what is driving this online growth?
BRMB Internet Monitor in the UK estimates that 25 million Britons use the internet for emailing. Is this media consumption?
There are other inconsistencies in the data, that suggests that only 4 per cent of internet users regularly visit adult sites, even though this is a multi- billion dollar industry. Only 3 per cent say they regularly gamble online. Getting reliable data on actual internet usage rather than aggregate usage is near impossible.
Every industry needs to evolve and that's just as true for the newspaper industry as any other. Over the past 18 months we have seen more new title launches than at any time in our industry's history.
As for the investment made by publishers in new printing and production equipment, we stopped counting at $6bn (E3bn). From News Corporation's $1 bn (E500m) investment in the UK to papers across the USA, Europe and Asia, it's clearly a good time to be manufacturing printing presses. That investment is yielding more colour, more flexibility and significantly lower unit costs.
So I suggest there has been no paradigm shift.
Every newspaper publisher produces a product - a brand - that has the capacity to be relevant to and purchased by the modern day consumer. Our only risk is that industry inertia leads to consumer apathy.
Which is why publishers are investing behind their brands and businesses - and that of course includes online, which is all about aggregating a larger audience, not cannibalising our existing audience.
When you pull it all together, the prognosis for newspapers is actually quite different from conventional wisdom.
Gavin K O'Reilly is the president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), and is the chief operating officer of Independent News & Media plc. This is an edited version of a presentation he gave last week to an audience in London, for WAN's Capital Markets Day
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