• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, November 10, 2006

LAS VEGAS -- Time magazine's decision to begin guaranteeing total magazine/online audience as of January will help the brand convey its story about attracting a younger audience, Time Inc. co-Chief Operating Officer John Squires told MediaDailyNews Thursday during a top print circulation conference.

The simultaneous decision to reduce the magazine's circulation rate base by 750,000 -- nearly 19% -- from 4.0 million to 3.25 million is strictly about "improving the magazine's economics for the future," Squires said while attending the Aduit Bureau of Circulations Conference here.

In addition to its significant investment in its Web site and its recent move to being delivered on weekends to increase timeliness, the brand will undergo a "substantial," yet-to-be-announced change in the magazine's editorial in January, he said. Squires mentioned the audience, rate base and editorial initiatives during an afternoon panel.

"We're not focused on the other newsweeklies," he said in a post-session interview. "It's not about a competitive positioning in print; it's about relevance for readers, wherever they may read the brand. We're building the newsmagazine brand of tomorrow. We'll have a story to tell about how the Time brand interacts with interested news consumers across platforms, and so we want to price ourselves to the marketplace in a different way."

Squires said Time Inc. has no current plans to reduce other titles' rate bases (it's standard practice for all publishers to review all titles' rate bases periodically), nor are any other titles currently tagged to begin declaring a total audience guarantee. "Of course, if the audience guarantee proves highly successful, we'd certainly think about whether it might be appropriate for other titles," he said.

But you can bet that other magazine publishers, some of whom would dearly love to drop the traditional rate base in favor of audience metrics, will also be watching carefully.

In an earlier ABC panel, Robin Steinberg, senior vice president-director, MediaVest print investment at MediaVest USA, noted that "certain companies are asking me for guarantees on audience numbers only," but she feels audience metrics are not yet at a point where this is feasible. Further, she noted, "why would we give this up when it's such a valuable, transparent, piece of information?"

During another panel, Initiative Worldwide CEO Alec Gerster stressed that circulation and audience metrics are related. "This notion that there's no correlation between the two is false," he said. "You can't have readership without circulation." The industry should be focusing on using both: circulation for its quantitative and demographics strengths, and audience for its qualitative strengths, he maintained.

Other noteworthy points from the ABC Conference's first day:

* The paid/nonpaid circulation debate is still alive. Magazine publishers point to a growing body of studies (some by agencies themselves) showing that nonpaying ("verified," in ABC parlance) readers have demographics, editorial and advertising engagement levels, and even product purchasing behavioral patterns very similar to those of paid readers. But Steinberg noted that she "intuitively" feels that someone who pays is more engaged. And newspapers' direct response capabilities may being working against them for some clients who now track coupon response: Walgreen Co. Vice President-Advertising Craig Sinclair reported that response to the paid portion of Sunday insert circulation is "very good," while response to nonpaid coverage copies is "very weak." On the other hand, Gerster emphasized that he thought the industry was "trying to get away from this issue of paid supposedly being the end all and be all." Payment, he said, is irrelevant: "The currency that's important today is time," he said; if someone's willing to spend time with a magazine, that indicates engagement.

* Is print being held to a higher standard than the Internet? Pointing to click fraud and the plethora of conflicting online metrics--versus the enhanced reporting transparency and tightened auditing standards for print media initiated at ABC during the past two years--some panelists suggested that online media are getting off easy. "It should not be hypocritical--the scrutiny should be the same for digital," said Rob Britton, managing director, brand development and advertising, American Airlines. Britton also complained that Web sites are "data rich, information poor," sending "waves of stuff" that is not filtered or analyzed in a way that's useful to media buyers. Digital media had built-in measurements from the get-go, which will make it possible to gauge their long-term benefits, noted Judy Vogel, director, Communications Insights, OMD. However, she said, "the accountability is not quite there yet. We try to incorporate many of these digital media into our mix models, and we have difficulty teasing out the effects on sales." Added Jim Hopson, vice president, Lee Enterprises: "Increased Net dollars increase the demand for accountability, as well, and audience metrics that may have been satisfactory in the past may no longer be satisfactory." Hopson and others said that ABC is increasingly being asked to audit Web sites and help lead industry efforts to standardize digital metrics.