In October, the Magazine Publishers Association (MPA) launched a new media currency to improve the image of the medium in the country.
Adspend in magazines fell by 12 per cent in September. Through this new currency, the MPA hopes to convince advertisers that the medium is worth investing in.
Adspend in magazines fell by 12 per cent in September. Through this new currency, the MPA hopes to convince advertisers that the medium is worth investing in.
According to James Selva, secretary of the MPA, existing data is not up to the task. “Magazine adspend is not showing any growth because Nielsen is not monitoring enough magazines,” he insists.
Selva is adamant that Nielsen’s coverage does not give advertisers and agencies enough details about the number of magazines in the country and their performance. The MPA is tracking the adspend of 110 publications (versus 30 monitored by Nielsen). Fourteen per cent of those account for 54 per cent of the total magazine ad revenue reported from January to September in Malaysia.
Media agency sources generally approve - as Rahul Thappa, MD of Mindshare Malaysia, points out, “any information which sheds new light on this small but important medium will be welcomed”.
However, some warn that better adspend numbers alone will not drive growth. S Ranganathan, CEO of Starcom Mediavest Malaysia, agrees that the new currency “gives a much better perspective on total spend in the magazine segment and will be useful for the publishers to arrive at competitive spend benchmarks”.
However, he cautions that for advertisers and media planners, “brand-level competitive spend information with breakdowns by ad size, page position and ad type” is more important as a gauge of activity in the sector.
Andy Miller, CEO of Vizeum Malaysia, agrees that while the new currency will help advertisers to “some extent”, the MPA’s measurement still has limitations. “The MPA figures have the numbers in terms of titles while Nielsen appears to have the quality,” he explains. “For a magazine to be monitored by Nielsen, it must be in the market for at least one year and must have an average of 10 full-page ads per issue. The MPA data does not provide reporting by product and advertiser level for competitive analysis.”
Miller adds that there are still holes in the MPA survey. “Malaysia’s Tatler, the top revenue earner monitored by Nielsen, is not among the MPA portfolio.”
To this end, the MPA is working on the way it collects advertising revenue data from magazine publishers and hopes to be the source of a broader range of information in time. For media agencies, that time cannot come quickly enough.
“We need to look at not only spend being captured in magazines, but also how we measure the effectiveness of using magazines as a medium in the overall mix,” says Ranganathan.
“A lot of work has been done in the West on the multiplier effect of this medium. Understanding this and measuring the effect of the medium in driving intent rather than just spend and reach will serve the industry much more.”
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This article was originally published in 3 December 2009 issue of Media.
