Magazines and TV

Of particular interest to magazine publishers are two competing media strategies: using TV only, versus combining TV with magazines.

Magazines are an effective and versatile advertising medium not only when employed on their own but also when used in conjunction with television. They are a natural complement to TV. Television is of course a very powerful medium, and obviously it works in a very different way from magazines. Its strengths cannot be matched by magazines, but television has limitations too, and these are precisely where magazines have their strengths.

Thus television is intrusive, has movement and sound and can create emotion, and while the commercial is being broadcast there is no competing editorial content; but a commercial runs a fixed length of time and is beyond the control of the viewer. Magazine advertisements are permanent and portable; the reader can hold and study an ad for as long as desired. The reader is in control of his or her own exposure. Consequently the combination of television and magazines is even more effective than television on its own.

Many aspects of this topic are examined below, and the clear conclusion emerges that the effectiveness of television advertising will be enhanced if it is combined with magazine advertising.

From the point of view of managing the budgets, there are two ways of bringing this mixed-media policy into being. One is to re-allocate a minority of the TV budget (perhaps about 25% or 35%) to magazines. The other is to leave the television budget untouched and make magazines a straight addition, drawing the money from elsewhere and in particular from promotions. Promotions can boost sales in the very short term but in the long run they weaken the product’s branding. In addition they can often be shown to be unprofitable even in the short term (as just discussed). A mixed-media campaign improves the efficiency of media advertising and justifies larger budgets spent on above-the-line media - if necessary at the expense of below-the-line.