Magazines Publish White Paper On Black Boxes, ROI

At a time when media are coming under increased scrutiny by advertisers and agencies to prove their accountability, the magazine industry today will release a report compiling some of the most leading research on the subject. The report, "Accountability: A Guide to Measuring ROI and ROO Across Media," draws from a wide range of data, research and modeling techniques being embraced by marketers and agencies that are influencing how they decide what media goes into their mix.

The report, more a primer than a new marketing pitch by the magazine industry, is intended to serve as a simple, user-friendly handbook for planners, buyers and advertisers trying to assess the role of magazines and other media amid the push to deliver greater ROI. As such, it is more of a play for goodwill than a new form of positioning research on the part of the magazine industry.

The effort, part of an ongoing series of accountability projects coming out of the Magazine Publishers of America, however, comes at a time when print media is under the microscope to demonstrate its own accountability, especially given a series of high-profile misstatements and questionable reporting practices within one of the industry's most sacred measures of accountability: audience circulation statements. Recently, federal investigators began a new probe into certain audience circulation practices involving the consumer magazine industry's largest publisher, Time Inc.

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While the new MPA report, which is being promoted in a series of trade ads, in mailings to individual advertisers and agencies, and which will be post this week on the MPA's www.magazine.org site, does not delve into the murky world of circulation statements, it does touch on three key components of accountability measures:


* Proof of performance
* Return on investment (ROI)
* Return on objectives (ROO)

The tome, a compilation of top lines from leading marketing mix modeling data, primary research from ad agencies, independent researchers such as Affinity Inc., and a recent Association of National Advertisers membership study, isn't designed to persuade as much as it is to inform, says MPA Chief Marketing Officer Ellen Oppenheim.

"The objective is to help buyers and sellers more accurately talk about accountability when the subject comes up," she says, adding that a positive byproduct is that "magazines tend to do well" with many of the ROI models sourced in the report.

"We didn't high that, but it was not the focus," says Oppenheim, emphasizing that the report is designed to be a "media neutral" view of media accountability.

In fact, while the MPA report does not address it, some leading experts on the subject are beginning to raise concerns that many of the most advanced ROI techniques used by marketers, especially models, tend to produce biases for TV vs. other media.

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