Rival industry bodies dismiss MPA’s latest study Sonja Koremans
Key media bodies have questioned the results of a new study released by the Magazine Publishers of Australia promoting the appeal of magazine advertising.
The report, Media Matchmaker, conducted by Jigsaw Strategic Research and the Roy Morgan Research, compares magazines with newspapers, the internet, pay TV, free-to-air TV and radio, with results claiming that consumers prefer ads in magazines than in any other media.
In nearly all advertising categories measured, magazines outperformed other media. The medium top scored in eight of the 11 categories – which included skin care, food, fashion, fitness, home and motor vehicles – as the best source of ideas and information.
The survey also found that 67% of people avoided free-to-air television ads compared with 19% in magazines, while 50% of people rated magazine ads helpful compared with 6% for radio.
Magazines were also seen as the best medium for making people aware of new products and services in certain categories.
But Joan Warner, chief executive of Commercial Radio Australia, argued the questions in the MPA survey and the advertising categories chosen skewed towards a favourable result for magazines.
“Other surveys show that radio consistently provides highly effective advertising for many sectors including government and retail and this would not be included in this MPA report because the questions have been targeted to suit magazines,” Warner said.
She pointed out that advertising relating to sectors such as travel, business, sport, recruitment and information technology had not been included in the MPA survey.
However, Helen Kingsmill, MPA executive director, said it was up to advertisers to decide if the survey was relevant.
“These are some of the biggest advertising categories in Australia, you are talking about skin and hair care and grooming and if you look at the some of the ad expenditure figures on these categories they are huge, they are key categories.”
She said not all advertising categories were solely magazine dominant.
“We also included the motor vehicle category, which is certainly not all magazine’s way. The study clearly acknowledged that newspapers and free-to-air TV have the lead in this category.”
Rhonda Brown, Free TV Australia director of marketing, said its own studies revealed something “quite different” to the MPA’s.
“Free TV reaches 13.5 million Australians every day and television remains at the heart of the most effective advertising campaigns – clear and simple,” she said.
“Of course, all of this is meaningless if the advertising is seen by few and if the advertising doesn’t translate to tangible results for advertisers,” Brown said.
