The effectiveness of advertising in magazines – what the archive can tell us

A personal reflection by a media researcher

Following on from my earlier article about magazine reading habits, I’ve dug a little deeper into the AMSR to investigate what treasures it holds in terms of magazine advertising effectiveness research.

The search term “magazine advertising effectiveness” gives me 208 results.  That’s a lot of rabbit holes to fall down so I’m going to pick 5 at random and see what gems I can find.

The first result is a 2014 report from the Periodical Publishers Association titled “Magonomics: the science of magazine advertising effectiveness” (1).  It’s a 48 page report, with data collected from 9000 magazine readers, and two of the key findings were that magazines “are the most inspirational of all media channels” and that “multi-platform usage amplifies the strength of the reader relationship and the strength of the advertising effect”.  Magazines topped the list in terms of the media which would be “most likely to contain ads that spark ideas that you act upon” and the report cites that magazines have evolved into “24/7, platform specific, anywhere content”. 

I then jumped back in time to a 1972 MRS Conference Paper (2) which looked at whether it was more effective to advertise in colour or black and white – more specifically whether 4 colour ads were more effective than 6 black and white ads (representing the same ad spend, with colour being 50% more expensive than black and white).     The products being tested were all from Milk of Magnesia People.  As an aside I loved the mention of “over-indulgence” as an ailment, alongside stomach upset, headache and constipation.     One of the findings of this piece of research was that colour was not always the most effective, some brands had better results with black and white ads.

In 1994 Nielsen Marketing Research conducted Phase 3 of The Research Study (3) which tested 12 brands across 20 markets.   I particularly liked the phrasing “together we’ll gain precisely the post-facto knowledge that’s needed to help guarantee all of our futures”.   Phase 2 of the research had concluded that “the selection of one brand over its competitor increased more when print and tv ads were run in tandem than when either medium was used independently.”

Jumping back again to 1986 I found the “Magazine Page Exposure Study” (4) which used three questions to calculate a MPX score for 110 magazines

• Number of separate days when magazine has been read/looked at during publication interval
• Number of separate issues that have been read/looked at on the last day
• Approximate proportion of pages opened on that last day

The MPX score is calculated by multiplying these three answers together and expresses the number of times the average reader opens the average page.   A score higher than 1.0 shows that there are multiple exposures to the advertisement, demonstrating that magazines offer more impacts per insertion than basic readership figures show.  It showed a range of scores from 0.7 to 2.6.

In 1999, “The Form that Ads Take (FAT) – A snapshot of UK magazine ads as seen by the public” (5) looked at whether advertising was persuasive or whether it reminds and refreshes memory and so creates a new association.   Of the 18 ads included in this study it was concluded that much of the advertising does not appear to be trying to differentiate their brand as different or better nor does it provide much information about the brand.   Hence that it’s serving as a reminder of the brand.

Each one of those reports was a fascinating read, and I’m sure I’ll find myself reading some of the other 203 that it’s thrown up as relevant.  

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