• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 20, 2006

In a potentially important development that could enable media planners and buyers to compare the reach and frequency of consumer magazines to those of media like TV and radio, Mediamark Research Inc. Wednesday said it will begin conducting weekly surveys to determine if the Internet can be used to accurately measure the speed with which specific issues of magazines accumulate their audiences.

The experiment, which begins next month, builds on research MRI conducted over the last three years involving 60,000 consumer interviews via the Internet.

The goal, the company said, is to "find out how quickly consumers read individual editions of magazines. This information will enable marketers and agencies to better calculate those magazines' contribution to advertising ROI and to develop an understanding of the factors contributing to issue-to-issue audience variability."

MRI said that, if successful, the test is not intended to replace its core audience research product, the national Survey of the American Consumer, which utilizes in-depth, in-persons interviews to develop so-called "average issue audience ratings," recognized as the currency for buying and selling magazine ads.

The experiment will survey 2,500 different adults each week via the Internet. They will be shown magazine covers along with those covers' issue dates and asked whether they had looked into or read those particular issues. The survey also will gather information on how consumers obtained the magazines and where they read them, along with demographic data about the individual readers.