Page 218 - DMGT507_SALES AND PROMOTIONS MANAGEMENT

Sales and Promotions Management

Notes The credibility of circulation figures is important in selecting a magazine. NRS and IRS collect
and report circulation data of all major publications. Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) also
collects and evaluates information regarding subscriptions and sales of member magazines and
newspapers and certifies the size of their print orders.
Verified circulation figures (by Audit Bureau of Circulation) provide media planners with
reliable data to evaluate the worth of any publication as a media vehicle. Most advertisers
believe that readers who are subscribers of a magazine are more likely to read it as well. Non-
verified circulation figures of magazines are generally considered to be less reliable and media
planners are inclined to be skeptical and avoid buying space in such publications.
Advertisers are often interested in pass-along readership figures of different magazines. These
figures, if available, indicate how many people read a magazine without purchasing it. This
occurs when the primary subscriber or purchaser passes-along a magazine to other person, or
when a magazine is read in libraries. Pass-along phenomena can greatly expand the readership
and should not be completely discounted. At an average if just two persons read one copy of a
magazine, then the total readership figure of that magazine doubles. Primary circulation figures
are more relevant and valuable because these indicate the primary in-home readers who most
likely spend more time with the publication, and are exposed on more occasions to ads than
others.
Both NRS and IRS provide data for urban and rural India. NRS data also includes lifestyle
parameters, such as type of home, cooking habits, children's medium of education, transportation
used for traveling to work, entertainment, and travel etc. Advertisers are greatly interested in
the demographic data and lifestyle patterns of various population segments to make more
focused selection of media vehicles.

Buying Magazine Space

The rates of magazine space depend primarily on circulation figures. Other elements that affect
the cost are size of the ad, and its position. As mentioned earlier, gatefolds, bleeds, and cover
positions cost much more than inside pages. Volume discounts are permissible to advertisers on
the total space purchased within a contract year. The space rates can also vary depending on the
number of times an advertiser runs the ad.

Task Collect five magazine ads for different products. Analyse why the
advertisers chose magazine and not newspapers.

Caselet Print ads Score Over TV for Womenswear
–by Ratna Bhusan
elevision advertising may be the FMCG industry's hot favorite, but when it comes
to the ready-to-wear industry, the scales are tipped in favour of print advertising.
TTop-line findings of a research study by Images magazine, covering a sample of
891 working women across 12 cities, reveal that when it comes to influencing ready-to-
wear purchase decisions of working women, print rules and television comes a very
distant second.

Contd...

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