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How to split the budget between TV and magazines

If television and magazines are to be used together, what proportion of the budget should go into magazines? Five pieces of evidence suggest that at least 25%-30% should go into magazines.

“Measuring Magazine Effectiveness” (MMA/MPA)

The MMA/MPA analysis [109, 110] already cited grouped brands according to their media mixes, and it was possible to compare the effectiveness of two patterns. One was a group of brands which spent about 80% of their budget on television, 13% in magazines and 7% on radio. The other group spent about 58% on television, 35% in magazines and 7% in radio. With radio’s proportion the same in both groups, what was the sales effect of spending 13% versus 35% in magazines?

There was a dramatic difference. The brands allocating about 13% to magazines had an average effectiveness of only 0.1, whereas those spending around 35% in magazines achieved an average effectiveness of 3.4. It appears that there is a critical mass below which a medium has too weak a share of advertising for the synergistic benefits of mixed-media scheduling to fully take effect. 13% is evidently below that critical mass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a related analysis television-using brands were grouped according to the proportion of marketing expenditure devoted to magazines; then MMA studied how effective the television advertising was. It found that the higher the proportion spent in magazines, the more effective the television advertising was. This is reinforcement for a conclusion reached earlier on different grounds: that magazines make television advertising work harder. Spending less than 4% in magazines is too little for this synergy to take place. Even 4%-10% spent in magazines does not allow the synergy to take full effect. It was those brands which spent 10%-61% in magazines which obtained the most benefit from the multiplier effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  “The 30/30 Synergy Study”: South Africa

An analysis in South Africa concluded that at least 30% of the mixed-media budget should go into magazines. Advertisers who spent at least 30% of their budget in print and at least 30% in television achieved the best market shares of purchasing. Accordingly the analysis was christened “The 30/30 Synergy Study” [136]. The study was based on a cross-analysis of two kinds of information: the way that advertising expenditure was split between main media types, as monitored by the Adindex service; and market shares of purchasing as recorded by Nielsen. The first study covered over 1600 brands in more than 130 product fields, and analysed their data covering 1988 to 1990. The 1994 study covered 138 product fields and analysed their 1991-1993 data, and it reinforced the previous conclusions. The 1994 results were:

  • Brand advertising works. Products which advertised outperformed non-advertisers, with an average market share of 31% for advertisers compared with an average 17% share for non-advertisers.
  • Advertisers using two or more main media types (averaging 27.5% market share) outperformed advertisers using only one medium, whether that one medium was print (20.4% average market share), TV (17.4% average market share) or radio (15.6% average market share).
  • This finding held true for market leaders, fast growing brands, static brands, and fast declining brands.
  • It was also true when the top-spending advertisers were examined on their own. The 30/30 ‘synergisers’ spending at least 30% in print and at least 30% in TV averaged a market share of 26.9%, compared with those using only print (18.0% average market share), only TV (18.0% average market share), or only radio (15.6% average market share).
  • The findings were similar for the brands in the bottom third of adspend. The 30/30 synergisers’ average market share was nearly twice that of brands using only print, or only TV, and nearly three times the market share of brands using only radio. The 30/30 policy works for small brands as well as big ones.

The South African study concluded that media strategists should approach media investment from a different perspective. Instead of adopting the point of view of “X is the most important media type - can we afford another?”, the philosophy should be “Ideally we should use two or more media types to exploit synergy and increase market share”.

Hassloch BehaviourScan panel

The single-source BehaviourScan panel in Hassloch, Germany [122], mentioned previously, was used to compare two different splits between television and magazines, in a controlled test. In one half of the test 70% was spent in television advertising and 30% in magazine advertising. In the other half 50% was spent in each medium, for the same total budget. The 50/50 split produced 17% more sales than the 70/30 split.

“Sales Uncovered”

In PPA’s 2005 “Sales Uncovered” analysis of the TNS Superpanel (described earlier in section 23) the 20 campaigns were divided into those brands spending less than 50% of the budget in magazines, and those spending over 50%. In both cases, Superpanel members who were exposed to the magazine advertising increased their purchases (£) more than those who had not seen the magazine advertising. However the difference between the exposed and non-exposed people was greater on average for the campaigns where magazines took more than 50% of ad expenditure (a difference of 16.7 percentage points) than those with less than half in magazines (a difference of 10.9 percentage points).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An additional analysis of Superpanel (see section 40) which was confined to seven mixed-media campaigns calculated that for every percentage point of the budget, magazines produced almost three times the amount of additional sales as television – at the budget split employed by those campaigns on average. 70% of expenditure went into television and only 22% into magazines. My conclusion was that 22% is too low a share of budget for magazines. With this budget split, television is operating well beyond the point of severe diminishing marginal returns, whereas magazine advertising is well short of that point.

Millward Brown / MPA

The studies discussed above were dealing with sales data. Millward Brown examined the question from the point of view of generating advertising awareness. This was the 113-brand analysis on behalf of Magazine Publishers of America [119] which has already been described.

The 113 brands were grouped according to the proportion of the TV+magazines budget which was spent in magazines. For each group, Millward Brown calculated the average cost per awareness point for the campaigns in the group. It was found that the higher the proportion of the budget spent in magazines, the greater the awareness cost-efficiency. For instance, those brands using 80%-90% television and only 10%-20% magazines were paying an average of $1.9 million for every awareness point generated. At the other end of the scale, brands allocating 50% or more of the mixed-media budget to magazines were spending only $0.44 million for every awareness point. The indication, once again, is that TV+magazines campaigns should allocate at least 30% to magazines.