Study Says Trade Ads Do Work

According to an independent study conducted by Fairfield Research, Inc., 18.0 million workers regularly made corporate purchases based on seeing an ad run in a trade publication, and those corporate purchases generated $110.2 Billion in sales revenue for trade-publication advertisers in 2000.

Fairfield CEO, Gary Gabelhouse explained the study's methodology, "We surveyed by telephone a nationally representative sample of adult workers and determined the incidence of corporate buying spurred by a trade-publication ad. We then surveyed the respondents as to the frequency of their acknowledged, ad-driven buying and the dollar volume spent on those goods and services. By projecting from U.S. Census data, we can determine quite accurately the ad-driven, B2B sales volume month-by-month and for the year."

Gabelhouse continued, saying, "We have basically quantified the economic value or GNP of trade-publication advertising in the year 2000 at $110.2 Billion. Knowing that, and by factoring in industry figures on advertising revenues we estimate the return on investment (ROI) of trade-publication advertising in 2000 to be about twelve-to-one. On average, advertisers in 2000 realized an estimated twelve dollars in B2B sales for every one dollar they invested in trade-publication advertising."

Gordon T. Hughes II, President/CEO of American Business Media said, "This study goes a long way to answer the media buyers' question of, 'What do I get for advertising in trade publications?' We now have a national benchmark of ad-driven sales and can track that for our members just as we track other industry vital signs. As well, advertising executives at our members' clients can readily justify their buys with hard figures. Based on this study, their average cost-of-sale is only 8%."

The study results and projections were based on U.S. Census data and have a maximum error range of 3.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

- Adam Bernard may be reached at adambernard@mediapost.com

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