India: new approach to measure reader involvement

Posted by Anna-Maria Mende on July 21, 2005 at 12:23 PM

The research division of the Group M, a media investment management company, Media Consumer Insight (MCI) is trying to integrate qualitative measures of reader involvement into their proprietary readership study.

According to agencyfaqs Debraj Tripathi, general manager, Maxus, Delhi, said that “current measures of a publication’s value such as AIR (average issue readership) does not adequately capture the power of a publication …To successfully unlock the full value of print advertising, one has to look beyond AIR and OTS (opportunities to see) and evaluate publications based on quality of reading and not just quantity, and finally see if this has made a difference to advertising recall, which is the best metric for the advertiser.” The new approach is called Passion4Print and tries to measure readers’ involvement with the newspaper or magazines. As stated by agencyfaqs “the five different parameters that influence a reader’s involvement with a publication are depth of reading, image of newspaper, personal benefit, content, and habit of reading.”

A first study discloses that involvement is the higher the more time spent with a publication. A positive, modern image raises involvement. Dailies and magazines differed for example to the extent to which depth of reading was determining passion, which was far more influential for magazines. The study also suggests that reader involvement is not proportional to the quantum of readers meaning that small publications were read with more passion. Other influencing factors are the personal benefits from the articles and perceived accuracy of reporting. These findings, when being replicated with a bigger sample, could prove interesting to advertisers as there is still too little known about the effects of advertising.

Sources: agencyfaqs

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