• by Michael Shields , July 5, 2004

Words like involvement, engagement, and "wantedness" are incessantly buzzed about these days by those in the magazine business. One of the earliest and most prominent attempts to formally measure these qualities has been the Reader's Digest-led Magazine Involvement Alliance, formed in late 2002.

Last spring, the Alliance rolled out a new batch of research from Knowledge Networks that supported its claim that reader involvement with magazines correlated with higher ad recall, lending credence to the group's push for planners to use the alliance-developed magazine "involvement index" to measure readers' passion for magazines.

Now a year after that research was conducted, and roughly nine months after the findings were being presented to agencies, awareness and usage of the index vary by agency, with some who are devoted and some yet to be indoctrinated. Meanwhile, the Alliance itself appears to be in need of a momentum boost.

The involvement index is fairly simple in nature; it is basically a blend of long-existing MRI favorability ratings such as "Read all four issues" or "One of my favorites," weight-averaged to form a single index that reflects a magazine's connection with readers. It uses data that has long been available to MRI users, but only recently was given its own distinct tab along with comp, coverage, and CPM.

Some media planners have been converted. "We are a big advocate of it," said Barry Lowenthal, media director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty. "We put it on all of our RFPs."

"It's been very positive," said Kathleen Love, Mediamark Research's CEO and president, regarding the response to the tool. "It makes sense of (MRI data) for planners. It gives them a real utility." Lowenthal believes that the usual comp-coverage-CPM measures don't reveal enough about readership. "MRI tells you what audience is," he said. "It doesn't capture the passion."

Yet the index still has not reached critical mass. "We meet with reps and they don't know what it is," Lowenthal said, adding: "I wouldn't be surprised to see that most media companies consider CPM their primary metric."

Renee Mitchell, research director at Smithsonian Magazine, one of the Alliance's charter members, indicated that the index may warrant some education among junior media planners. "We are not specifically seeing this in RFPs," she said. "The top people, the clients, are very open to it. Planners are coming along. Many planners do know about it. Others are not aware."

One issue for planners is training, as many planners receive only limited instruction on how to use the various third-party interfaces to access MRI data.

"A lot of planners don't know how to code for (this type of data)," Lowenthal said. "Most media planners have not grown up with testing the MRI waters. They don't have awareness."

Britta Ware, director, U.S. advertising research at Reader's Digest, and unofficial Alliance spokesperson, says that the top priority for the alliance these days is to spread the word about the metric's availability. She and other Alliance members intimated that there is more to come from the group down the road.

While selling the index to planners is at the forefront, The Alliance itself may be in need of a boost, as much of the initial attention generated in the industry may have subsided. "My sense is that this point, (the Alliance) is not getting the focus it was getting," said Audrey Siegel, senior vice president and director of client services at TargetCast TCM. "Planners are using it, but it is certainly not elevated to the status of the basics--comp, coverage."

There is also a sense among some in the research and planning disciplines that the involvement index does not dig deep enough, and may represent just one piece of the puzzle. Many agencies continue to push for their own propriety metrics for magazine readership.

"We've always embraced the concept (of the index)," said David Ernst, EVP, director of futures and technologies, Initiative Media. "We continue to use it conceptually. We had been using similar measures on our own which are customized for clients."

Ernst's group has employed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop research on engagement that attempts to yield more insight into how it impacts advertising's success.

"It's about finding the right environment for each individual brand," he said.

Starcom is similarly embarking on its own magazine research, working with publishers toward measures that aid in demonstrating print's accountability. The index "is a good first step," according to Brenda White, Starcom USA media director, but more work is probably needed.

"It raised only one piece," Siegel added. "It's not the holy grail. It's a surrogate."

Beth Uyenco, research director at OMD in Chicago, believes that research conducted with Knowledge Networks was the most important part of the alliance's work. "The research served to corroborate [that involvement matters]," she said. "What they provided was empirical proof."

Most agreed that while the index's role in planning has not yet been cemented, the dialogue created by the alliance is nothing but positive. "It is a good thing that the industry acknowledged that there are important measures to use beyond impressions," said Ernst. By and large, the industry has realized that audience is not enough," Uyenco added. "There has to be a better way to differentiate venues."