How readers use magazine advertisements

We know from the JICNARS Reader Categorisation Study (discussed earlier in section 10) that the average reader of the average magazine has his or her eyes open in front of more than 90% of the spreads. Thus nearly all of the advertisements are at least glanced at in the process of screening the magazine’s contents.

Having opened the relevant spread, how do readers use the advertisements? And why doesn’t every ad get a 90% recall score in post-testing?

It has long been established that in general terms selective perception comes into operation. People screen the contents (ads as well as editorial) for things which have meaning to the reader. There are many ways in which an advertisement can hold meaning for the reader:

• she (or he) uses the product type or brand
• she recently gave up using the product type or brand
• she is interested in an activity portrayed in the ad
• she is interested in a famous person shown in the ad
• someone in the ad reminds her of someone she knows - a relative, friend or colleague
• she recognises the place shown in the ad
• the ad contains a dramatic, intriguing or amusing device - visual or in words or both
• the ad has some previous connection for her (e.g. remembering an earlier ad in the campaign, which amused/intrigued/interested her)
• and so on

If an ad conveys meaning, the reader will look at it more closely. If not, the reader’s attention is likely to move on to something else on the spread or another spread.

A more detailed account of this process has been given by Wendy Gordon and Neil Swan of The Research Business [43]. Their full account is summarised by an inverted triangle.

They wrote “The diagram illustrates how people consume press advertisements. There is an instant level of absorption in which either the product category, a simple message and/or the brand is communicated immediately. This happens in the time that it takes for a person to flick over the pages of a magazine or to page through a newspaper.

“If something about the advertisement succeeds in holding the reader’s attention, the next stage is one of searching, scanning and following the signposting. By this we mean that the reader absorbs additional brand information whether it be rational or emotional, speed reading through the advertisement by looking at visuals or paragraph headings.

“Lastly, the details of the supporting copy might be read completely or almost completely.”

If an ad can succeed in attracting attention - and every single ad has this possibility open to it - the communication that is delivered can be very effective indeed. This is essentially because the reader is in control of the timing of the exposure, and is thus in control of how the ad is used.

Other accounts of the way magazine ads are used by readers are given in section 21 dealing with pre-testing advertisements.

Effect of interest in the product field or brand

It is well known that interest in or usage of a brand or product field is likely to increase the chance of an advertisement being noticed, as many studies have proved. An instance of this comes from IPC Magazines’ “Ad Track” survey conducted by Millward Brown [44]. This survey is discussed in more detail later on, but for the moment the following graph shows for 21 products the relationship between interest in the product field and awareness of the advertising. Nearly all cases lie on or close to the straight-line diagonal; in other words, awareness of the advertising tends to increase as interest in the product field increases.

But hope is not lost for low-interest product fields. Magazines can overcome this through interesting and relevant creative work. On the chart, Campbell’s Condensed Soup is an example. Awareness of the advertising is far higher than one would predict from the modest interest in the soup market. This was achieved through featuring two appetising recipes describing ways of using soup as an ingredient in cooking.

Even when the product field is low-interest, there is always a way of creating an ad that will be high-interest.

And it is wise to check the proposed creative treatments by pre-testing the ads before running them. The topic of pre-testing is discussed here.