Terry Prill, newspaper strategist and special-projects manager for Dayton Hudson Corp. in Minneapolis, recalled an incident last year when the company’s media-buying team was asked to review major markets for alternative newspapers that reach 18- to-24-year-olds.
“Why the alternative press?” Prill asked when she saw the request. “All our major newspapers have good entertainment sections. They get into the home.”
To prove it, some buyers called their contacts at major metros and asked for readership data on this demographic group to support the use of newspaper entertainment sections.
“What should have taken a couple of days ended up taking over a week, and deadlines were missed,” Prill said last June during a panel discussion at the Marketing Conference in San Francisco. “We had to decipher and try to align different formats, charts and even number definitions. Some information was missing, so it took many call-backs. Some buyers didn’t even pursue the comparison because the effort was too great. When they turned in their reports, they [contained information] only on the alternative newspapers.”
Prill’s account of this incident illustrates the disconnect between advertisers who want credible, audited and comparable readership information, and newspaper executives and researchers who struggle to provide it. To bridge this gap, the Audit Bureau of Circulations in Schaumburg, Ill., established the Reader Profile service in November 1999. Their goals were to:
• Respond to the needs of ABC newspaper-advertiser and agency members
• Ensure that all newspaper-research studies are conducted to a minimum set of standards
• Provide advertisers with the confidence that studies will adhere to a comparable set of standards among all newspapers and all markets
• Respond to calls from newspaper-industry leaders to increase the use of readership information.
To date, though, newspaper participation in the Reader Profile service has fallen far short of expectations, says Matt Spahn, director of media planning and analysis for Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
“At Sears, we’re buying [advertising] in 2,000 newspapers. To have only a handful of them as part of this service doesn’t do a lot of good. We’re disappointed with the degree to which newspapers have embraced the Reader Profile service,” says Spahn, who, like Prill, serves on the ABC board of directors. “This was an initiative that the [advertising] industry asked for to make readership a bigger part of our dialogue.”
By mid-October, ABC had completed readership audits on only 32 dailies and one group of weeklies, according to Mark Wachowicz, ABC senior vice president of marketing. (See list, p.29). “To put it in perspective, when we started the service, we thought we would have completed 150 audits by summer 2000,” Wachowicz says.
At presstime, 39 audits were in progress, and 23 more were scheduled for fourth-quarter 2000. Participating newspapers range from the 14,951-circulation Iowa City Press-Citizen to the Houston Chronicle (morning, circulation 546,799) and The Dallas Morning News (Sunday circulation, 785,758).
MISCONCEPTIONS
At the Marketing Conference session,
Wachowicz debunked what he called “common misconceptions” associated
with the Reader Profile service:
• ABC standards are too restrictive. “The intent of the program was to establish a minimum set of standards for all researchers to follow,” Wachowicz said. ABC standards are based on the guidelines of the Advertising Research Foundation.
• ABC mandates the market. “A newspaper defines the study geography,” he said.
• ABC controls the process. “ABC does not conduct the research, it simply verifies that the study was conducted to established standards.”
• ABC calculates the final data. “The research company [that conducted the study] does all the weighting,” he noted. “ABC simply verifies that the process was done correctly.”
• ABC requires a 40 percent response rate to publish a Reader Profile report. “ABC will publish all reports despite the response rate,” Wachowicz said.
• ABC requires public release of the report. “A private release option is available. However, we do not promote or encourage it. Our advertiser members frown upon the option.”
Wachowicz says cost often is cited by newspaper executives as a reason for not participating. To make the service more affordable to smaller newspapers, ABC agreed to a three-year shelf life for the audit and to charge newspapers with circulations up to 49,999 $6,000 for the verification.
For newspapers with circulations of 50,000 and above, the audit is good for two years, Wachowicz says, and the cost increases based on circulation: papers with 50,000-to-74,999 circulation pay $7,000; 75,000-to-99,999, $8,000; 100,000-to-249,999, $10,000; 250,000 and up, $12,500.
Other newspaper executives and representatives of research companies expressed concerns about releasing proprietary information on readership.
Some newspaper representatives argue that their readership research from nationally recognized companies has been accepted by advertisers. That’s true, says Spahn, but having a nonbiased third-party organization like ABC verify the information makes it more valuable.
Prill pointed out that that her media-buying colleagues at Dayton Hudson Corp. and its subsidiary Target Corp. “use almost every bit of research we receive from newspapers. However, most of the research takes way too much time to navigate. We need information badly; many times, all we get is data.”
Publishers agree that circulation data—the total number of paid copies sold—doesn’t give a true picture of who reads their newspapers. They would like advertisers to consider readership. This computation yields a bigger number because it includes the possibility of more than one reader per household and per single-copy sale. The Reader Profile report also includes data on 11 standard demographic elements, including age, education, ethnicity, gender, household income, marital status and race. For a look at some completed Reader Profile reports, go to www.accessabc.com/info/released.htm.
WHY READERSHIP?
An NAA brochure, “Tell the Whole
Story,” outlines how readership information can benefit newspapers and
advertisers. The brochure was sent to all NAA member newspapers in November.
It cites a 1998 survey by Wirthlin Worldwide in McLean, Va., that probed how
advertisers and ad-agency media buyers decide on media placement and how information
provided by newspapers compares to that provided by other media.
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Signed and Sealed
DAILIES:
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More than half of those surveyed were more interested in reaching a desired audience than reaching the greatest numbers or reaching them at the lowest cost. Only 18 percent said that reaching a maximum number of people was more important to them, and only 14 percent said cost was most important. Nearly 75 percent said they primarily want to target specific customers.
Yet only 9 percent cited a “desirable audience” as newspapers’ biggest advantage. Twenty percent cited newspapers’ “immediacy,” 16 percent cited wide-reaching circulation, and 11 percent cited good value.
Spahn notes that credible readership information can “put newspapers in a better light” when media planners look at all media outlets to decide what to use for specific ad campaigns. He insists, “Lack of readership research is one of the contributing factors to why newspapers haven’t come up on media planners’ radar.”
Prill said Target plans to add 80 stores by year-end. “We generate 82 million preprints a week. Fast access to hard data is critical to our ability to understand new markets in the tight time frame. While our core traffic-driving newspaper campaigns may be viewed as mass, we’re increasingly getting into micromarketing and demographic marketing over and above the current run-of-paper [advertising] we do. We can’t develop micromarketing campaigns without information. We need information on subscribers, single-copy buyers and pass-alongs.”
Marsha Lawrence, print-media manager for Best Buy Co. in Eden Prairie, Minn., says newspaper publishers should continue to sell with circulation. “I don’t want you to use readership versus circulation,” she notes. “I want you to use readership in combination with and to support circulation numbers. You still need to grow your circulation. And you need to understand where your circulation base is because that will help drive your readership.”
Lawrence says publishers “do excellent research, but it needs to be tailored and presented in a way that makes sense for advertisers. You also need to work as a team. [Readership research] has to go to circulation [marketing employees] so they know what kind of target audience advertisers are looking for you to grow. It also has to go to editorial [staffers] so they understand what audience you’re reaching.”
Like Prill, she recalls an effort to try to target a reader group, young males. “We sent faxes to newspapers [for readership information]. It caused fear out there: ‘Why do you want to know this?’ Why wouldn’t I want to know this? These are people I’m trying to talk to.”
As it turns out, newspaper execs had nothing to fear, Lawrence says. “You were reaching them very well. You were scared for nothing.”
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