The physical aspects of handling magazines         

How copies are obtained

A magazine’s life often extends beyond the original buyer or buying household. Highly complex and organised networks of further readers can exist, often involving the exchange of magazines on a regular basis. The variety of ways in which people obtain their magazines is measured by the "National Readership Survey" [32], and also by the "Quality of Reading Survey" (QRS) published in 2000 by IPA, ISBA & PPA, and conducted by Ipsos-RSL [33].

Naturally, different kinds of magazine, and in some cases individual titles, tend to be acquired in different ways. There may be a high proportion of copies delivered to the home, or being bought at newsagents, or being passed on from another household, or being read outside the home. As examples, here are profiles for three categories of magazine:

 

	5 television weeklies	5 country interests magazines	3 retirement monthlies
	%	%	%
Bought it myself	58	36	18
Delivered to my home by newsagent	8	3	10
Postal subscription to my home	1	4	43
Someone else in my household bought it	21	5	3
Passed on/lent from another household	3	16	15
Office/work copy	1	5	1
Only saw it outside my home/office	7	29	3
Other	1	2	8
Total	100	100	100

Source: QRS 2000

As the table indicates, television weeklies have a very high proportion of readers whose copy is bought by themselves or another household member or is delivered to the home. By contrast, readers of the country interests magazines have a significant proportion of copies obtained from another household, and more than a quarter of copies are read only outside the home or office. The readers of retirement magazines have a large proportion of copies through postal subscription.

How to interpret such profiles is a debatable matter. It would be an over-simplification to say that people who buy a magazine for themselves or a member of their household necessarily read it more intensely than people who see their copy in other ways.

The National Magazines/G+J survey “Women & Magazines: The Medium and the Message” [22] had something to say on this. “Purchase is not essential to the formation of a strong reader/magazine relationship. If reader identification with the brand’s values is strong then a close relationship with the magazine will develop. When secondary and tertiary readers receive a magazine on a regular basis, the reader affiliation and commitment to the brand is often as strong as the purchaser’s.”

WCRS commented that pass-on readers “are not of drastically less value” to advertisers than primary readers. Pass-on readership “is real, ‘involved’ readership and largely not the reading of out-of-date copies in hairdressers of media department mythology” [15].

Time spent reading

Magazines are thoroughly read and a lot of time is spent reading them. The 2000 "Quality of Reading Survey" [33] found that for the average paid-for magazine 54 minutes were spent reading a typical issue. For some categories of magazine (particularly specialist

publications) the average was appreciably higher - up to 74 minutes - while the lowest reading time for a paid-for magazine category was 34 minutes. The newspaper supplements/sections averaged only 26 minutes of reading time, less than half the average for paid-for titles. A complete listing of adults’ time spent reading by category of magazine is given in the table which follows. As always, the variations by type of magazine are a reminder that different kinds of magazine work in different ways, as is appropriate to the subject matter and method of distribution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proportion of issue read

Another way of looking at thoroughness of reading is to measure the proportion of the magazine that is normally read by the time the reader has finished with it.

Once again the "Quality of Reading Survey" (QRS) provides the most recent information across a representative range of magazine categories. QRS found that the typical reader of a paid-for magazine had opened 78% of the pages by the time he or she had finished with the issue. The proportion of readers who had opened at least 50% of pages averaged 83%, while 44% of readers had opened every single page in a typical issue.

A breakdown by type of magazine is given in the table opposite. One of the striking things is the consistency of the high figures, with no paid-for segment (except for the classified advertising titles) scoring less than 70% of pages opened by the average reader.

 

Average time spent reading, and proportion of pages opened
Adults
	Time spent reading	Proportion of pages opened
All paid-for magazines	54	78
Science & nature	74	77
General interest miscellaneous	69	73
Gardening	68	80
Motorcycling	68	80
Motoring - classic cars	65	78
Retirement	64	87
Golf	63	79
Current affairs & finance	60	73
Bridal	60	77
Angling	59	79
Homes & decoration	57	79
Motoring - performance cars	57	77
Women's general monthlies	56	80
Women's weeklies	55	83
Men's & style magazines	54	78
Parenting	53	71
Music	52	80
TV weeklies	50	82
Adult humour	50	82
Motoring - general	50	73
Country interests	49	76
Buying & selling (classified advertising)	48	64
Young women's magazines	47	81
Women's lifestyle	47	75
Slimming	43	73
Football	39	73
Women's health & beauty	37	75
Film, entertainment and listings	37	77
Teenage	34	72
Customer magazines:
TV listings	44	69
Motoring & travel	25	73
Women's	23	75
Newspaper supplements/sections	26	80

Source: QRS 2000 

Even these impressive figures are an under-estimation of the true exposure achieved by the pages of a magazine. In answering a question about the pages they had read or opened, informants are often interpreting this as including only those pages on which a significant proportion of the text was read, word for word; they are likely to be excluding items glanced at and passed over without a detailed read.

Thus the real traffic through the pages is very high indeed. This has been confirmed by a number of studies, of which the classic piece of research was the “Reader Categorisation Study” [34] carried out for JICNARS (National Readership Survey) by Research Services Ltd.

This study included a page traffic check in which respondents were shown copies of magazines they had recently completed reading. They were taken through the copies page by page and asked to say for each page whether they “saw and read something on” the page, “saw but just glanced at” it, or “didn’t see at all”.

The result was an average spread traffic score of 93% for general and women’s weeklies and 92% for general and women’s monthlies. The average page traffic score was virtually as high:

	Weeklies %	Monthlies %
Spread traffic	93	92
Page traffic	91	90
Reading traffic	51	44

Definitions: Page traffic: proportion of pages claimed as either “read something on” or “just glanced at”. Spread traffic: proportion of spreads where either or both facing pages were claimed as above. Reading traffic: proportion of pages claimed as “read something” on it.

Thus nine or more pages and spreads out of every ten are looked at.

This is the true measure of the exposure to the advertising which the magazine medium provides. Once the magazine has delivered the reader’s eyes open in front of the page it is largely up to the creative treatment of the advertisement, and the interest of the product, to convert that opportunity into an examination of the advertisement.

The third type of score in the table above is ‘reading traffic’ - the proportion of pages on which something was actively read (as distinct from just glanced at). Around half of all pages are read in this more demanding sense.

Similar patterns in other countries

Surveys in many other countries have shown similar patterns: people spend substantial time reading their magazines, the copies are read thoroughly, and they also tend to be read repeatedly, so that the average page (and thus the average advertisement) is exposed more than once.

A recent example of such surveys is “Don’t Talk To Strangers – the Quality of Magazine Reading Survey”, published in 2002 by Magazine Publishers of Australia and conducted by Roy Morgan Research [35].

It found that primary readers of magazines (i.e. subscribers or purchasers) averaged 5.5 reading occasions of the average issue of a weekly magazine, and 7.3 reading occasions of an average monthly – though newspaper magazine supplements only achieved 2.9 occasions. Among pass-on readers, weekly magazines averaged 3.0 reading occasions, monthlies averaged 2.6 and newspaper supplements averaged 2.3.

Together with data on time spent reading, proportion of pages opened, and a range of other questions on qualitative aspects of reading, the MPA was able to build up a picture of how magazines are used. The paid-for magazines achieve a high intensity of reading: impressive levels of multiple reading occasions and time spent, resulting in thorough reading.

Paid-for magazines are more inspirational than newspaper supplements or other media. There is a strong interaction and bond between readers and their magazines. Readers view their favourite publications as friends; when they are reading their magazines – both the editorial and advertising content – they are not talking to strangers.

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