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Mixed-media advertising: the effectiveness of combining magazines and television

36. Magazines and TV
37. TV+magazines: improved distribution of advertising exposure
  Benefits of TV+print, in terms of exposure and targeting
38. TV+Magazines communicate better than TV-only
  ‘Multiplying the Media Effect’
  ‘The Media Multiplier’
  A German media multiplier study: Ford Cougar
  The synergy is world-wide
39. Magazines equal TV for creating awareness – but do so at less cost
  IPC's Ad Track
  MPA's 113-brand tracking study
40. Market tests: sales effectiveness of TV+magazines
  ‘Sales Uncovered’
  “Proof of Performance”: TV + magazines
  USA: ‘Measuring Magazine Effectiveness’, MMA/MPA
  UK: Cusson's Carex Hand Wash
  UK: Nielsen’s ‘Strategies of Successful Brands’
  UK: Kenco Freeze Dried Instant Coffee
  Germany: Bauer and Hassloch BehaviourScan panel
  USA: STAS of television and magazines
41. TV & magazine campaigns: recency planning
  The significance of NRS readership accumulation data
  Diminishing returns to repetition
  Nielsen data analysed by John Philip Jones
  Re-presentation of Colin McDonalds’ data
  Carat’s Penrith Project
  Andrew Roberts’ analysis of Superpanel
  Are one (or two) TV exposures a week enough?
  Consumer buying behaviour: continuous
42. How to split the budget between TV and magazines
  ‘Measuring Magazine Effectiveness’, MMA/MPA
  ‘The 30/30 Synergy Study’, South Africa
  Hassloch BehaviourScan panel
  ‘Sales Uncovered’
  Millward Brown/MPA
43. How to flight the two media

Summary

  • Magazines and television are complementary to one another. TV advertising is powerful, intrusive but fleeting. Magazine advertising is under the control of the readers, carries the reader-relationship values, and can reach light viewers. There is clear evidence that a TV-plus-magazines strategy will be more effective than a TV-only campaign.
  • Most TV-only campaigns give inadequate weight to important sectors of the market - lighter viewers of commercial television, who tend to be younger, upmarket and better educated. A combination of television and magazines can achieve a very considerable improvement in the way exposures are distributed across the audience. In other words, better targeting.
  • Because of the different ways in which the two media work, the communication from a TV campaign can be enhanced by adding magazines. Magazines can both convey new information that is not in the TV commercial, and lead people to perceive the TV commercial in new ways. The result is a richer, more complete communication. Magazines make television work harder. The page and the screen nourish each other.
  • Magazine campaigns create awareness at a very similar level to television. The Adtrack study showed that across a range of campaigns, the average awareness achieved by 100 gross rating points in TV was 13%, and in magazines the average was exactly the same, 13%. But the magazine exposures are generated at roughly half the cost of TV.
  • Evidence from America reached the same conclusion: dollar for dollar, magazines deliver significantly higher advertising awareness levels than television.
  • PPA’s ‘Sales Uncovered’ 2005 study showed that magazine advertising has a similar sales effect to television advertising, but at a much lower cost.
  • Reinforcing this, PPA’s earlier analyses of consumer panel data also found that magazines produce significant gains in market share when used in combination with television advertising. Among the heavier-reading section of magazine readers, magazine advertising increased average brand share by 11%, over and above the effect of the television advertising.
  • Other analyses from America showed that, dollar for dollar, magazines generate more sales than television.
  • More and more market tests and case histories, in UK and elsewhere, are proving that mixed-media TV-plus-magazines campaigns out-perform the TV-only strategy in selling products.
  • The improved performance from a mixed-media campaign is due to a combination of better targeting (especially among the lighter/younger/upmarket segments) and more powerful communication than television alone can deliver.
  • The 2004 NRS Readership Accumulation Survey enables exposures to magazine advertising to be distributed through time in an accurate way, reflecting the rate of build-up of readers of a magazine issue. This means that magazine advertising can be planned in the same way as television advertising: through weekly ratings points and weekly reach estimates.
  • All media are subject to diminishing returns, and many television campaigns appear to have reached the point of very low marginal returns. The marginal TV money would be better spent in another medium, especially magazines.
  • There are strong arguments for continuous advertising pressure (as opposed to heavy bursts with gaps in between). Magazines are excellent at delivering this, whether on their own or in combination with other media.
  • When TV and magazines are being used together, it pays to put at least 25%-30% of the budget into magazines, according to several studies.
  • Television and magazine advertisements should run together rather than at different times, so the messages can interact for maximum synergy.
  • In times of recession, it pays to maintain or even increase one’s advertising instead of cutting it.