• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 15, 2010

After a slow-ish start, Mediamark Research & Intelligence's comprehensive advertising measurement service for consumer magazines, AdMeasure, is gaining momentum. More clients are signing up for the ad ratings. On Monday, MRI revealed over a half-dozen new subscribers -- including big media agencies and publishers -- indicating broad interest in the pioneering ratings service.

On the publishing side, new subscribers include Conde Nast, ESPN The Magazine and Hearst Magazines, joining other majors like Time Inc. and the Meredith Corp. With the addition of Conde Nast and Hearst, MRI now has all four of the largest magazine publishers subscribing to AdMeasure.

On the agency side, new subscribers include Initiative Media, MPG, Universal McCann, OMD and PHD. These agencies join Starcom USA and Group M, which had already signed up for AdMeasure. (Group M's subscription covered divisions like Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia, and Mindshare.)

As on the publishing side, the addition of these new clients gives AdMeasure a quorum of subscribers covering the majority of the media planning and buying industry.

MRI developed AdMeasure to transition from magazine metrics based on the opportunity to see an ad to actual ad exposure and impact. AdMeasure combines data-describing ad recall, the influence of the ad on the consumer's perception of the brand, and actions taken subsequent to seeing the ad with audience data to determine the ad's impact over time.

The service was formed by the integration of MRI's new issue-specific readership data with ad-effectiveness data from GfK Starch, which MRI acquired in the first half of 2009. In 2010, MRI is offering AdMeasure ratings for every national ad in every issue of all 200 consumer magazines tracked by the research firm.

While applauded as a major step forward in magazine ad measurement, AdMeasure's debut did not trigger a rush to subscribe among publishers and media agencies, in part because of the steep economic downturn.

The lukewarm reaction prompted concern that MRI might not be able to sustain the more expensive, research-intensive service; this outcome would have been especially ironic, considering it was developed under pressure from the magazine industry and media agencies.