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Endemic in the decision to advertise in magazines would be the knowledge that you will be able to assess and evaluate the results of your campaign, to even consider placing an advertisement without such knowledge would be very ill advised.

Magazines in the modern media scene cover a wide spectrum of interests. Clearly you would select the title that best represented the the market you wished to address. This can be easily established by simply reading the magazine for a few issues then researching the circulation and readership data that is readily available for all titles.

The circulation figures of magazines are very strictly overseen by an independent body, in the UK it is The Audit Bureau of Circulations. They inspect and verify the figures given them by the publishers of all titles and their figures are accepted by the industry as accurate. So from these figures you can establish the size of the circulation for the title you have chosen. It is important to remember that magazines are read by more than one person per copy. The readership is measured in a different way.

Readership is measured by an group of industry bodies. Their researchers regularly interview and interrogate a fair proportion of the public to establish who reads which titles, their social status, age and in which region of the country they live. Further information is available from other sources that confirm this data and expands it further to show the income, readership and expenditure on a wide range of products and services.

With this information it is possible to reduce wastage of expenditure and ensure that every penny spent goes towards reaching the target audience. The proof though is in the eating, or this case the reading! The advertisement will have been created to achieve a given objective. It may be to focus public awareness onto a product or service, it may be to sell off the page, ie mail order. Most likely it will form part of an overall campaign designed to move products from the shelves of supermarkets or the offices of the service industries. To plan the assessment of the results should form an integral part of the original media plan.

If the advertisement invites you to purchase off the page, that is, to respond to an offer of some kind, the advertisement will be keyed. That means it will contain a word or phrase that no other ad carried. Measurement therefore is simple. As part of an overall campaign it is rather more difficult to judge which magazine was the most effective. One way of judging a level of effect is to pre-plan a reading and noting survey of the advertisements in the different titles. This will tell you how many people read the announcement, but will not be regarded as absolutely accurate. In the final analysis the only certain way to judge the effect of any advertising campaign is by the offtake of the product from the shelves. Public awareness of something new soon makes itself apparent, not always to the benefit of the advertiser.

Learn more about this author, Derek Rogers.
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