MediaDailyNews
To Be
Free, Or Not To Be: Emmis Raises The Question |
Joe
Mandese, Tuesday, Jun 27, 2006 8:33 AM ET |
IN
A REVELATION THAT COULD have bearing on how advertisers consider the value of
other "free" media, new research suggests that consumers who
receive unpaid subscriptions to upscale city and regional magazines are far
less inclined to read them, and when they do, they don't value them as much
as magazines they pay for. The findings, which were revealed recently to
members of the City and Regional Magazine Association, comes from a study
conducted by a media researcher known for reaching upscale media consumers:
Monroe Mendelsohn Research, authors of the so-called affluent study. To
understand what impact a barrage of new upscale, but freebie, magazines are
having on the market for paid circulation magazines, Emmis Communications,
one of the largest publisher of city and regional magazines, commissioned MMR
to survey readers. The result: a majority of 2,250 randomly selected
consumers surveyed in key markets where such magazines are published either
were unaware of the free magazines, or said they did not read them. In Dallas, for
example, where Emmis publishes paid circulation Texas Monthly, only
4.5 percent of people in that market say they had "never heard of"
that magazine. That compares with as much as 80 percent who were unfamiliar
with free circulation rival Brilliant. Similar results were found in Since Emmis is so heavily banked on the paid model, the company
took a bit of a risk by commissioning the research and presenting it to the
88 members of the regional magazine association, but Susie Love, executive
vice president-director of sales and marketing at Emmis, says the company
simply wanted to know what impact the incursion of free urban magazines were
having on their market, and whether Emmis should also explore that approach.
The answer, she says, was a definite "no." "The reason we
did it this was that we kept hearing from agencies and people from the
[Magazine Publishers of America] making statements like, 'Does paid really
matter?' We're built on paid circulation. And we felt if people are asking
that question, we should find the answer." Love says that
following her presentation to the association, "eight or nine"
other paid magazines are planning to conduct similar research in their
markets. The research comes as the
magazine industry, along with other media, are trying to establish a wide
range of metrics for demonstrating terms such as engagement, involvement, and
attentiveness to their medium and the advertising that is carried within it.
The new MMR research, she says, may speak to a term that has been used
frequently by magazine publishers in the past to differentiate their book
from others: "wantedness." Love says the findings
may have implications for the wantedness of other free vs. paid media,
especially newspapers, where free dailies are beginning to populate major
metros like However, she's not
clear what it says about electronic media, where free historically has been
the norm. "We look at paid
as people wanting our publication, but in order to get those paid readers, we
also put a lot of money into our content," she says, adding, "I'm
not sure paid radio and television has better content than free radio and
television. And I'm not sure whether the consumer sees it that way. It would
be interesting to find out." |