• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 27, 2006

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 Atlanta, where Emmis publishes Atlanta magazine, and in Los Angeles, where it publishes Los Angeles magazine.

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 New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

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."