Guest "Best-and-Worst" Commentary by MRI's Julian Baim: Dueling Covers: A Look At Issue-Specific Readership.
Monday, March 10, 2008

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min's annual look at which magazine covers sold the most at the newsstand is a good barometer of what motivates people to plunk down a few dollars for their reading pleasure. But if you look at not just newsstand sales but also subscriptions and other avenues of magazine distribution and consumption, you can gain insight into the power of certain images and words. What emerges is a clearer picture of what makes certain issues achieve higher total readership when compared with other issues of the same magazine.

In June 2007, Mediamark Research & Intelligence issued the magazine industry's first-ever syndicated research showing total audience estimates for individual issues of magazines. Until then, publishers relied upon the average issue audience estimate from MRI's semiannual Survey of the American Consumer. Using continuous weekly online surveys, the new Issue Specific Readership Study is designed to put magazines on an equal playing field with other media in the evaluation process. It allows marketers to gauge the reach of specific ad campaigns so they can better calculate magazines contribution to advertising return on investment. The study is based on the assumption that not every issue of a magazine yields the same audience size.

The Internet was chosen as a survey platform because it offers advantages in cost, sample size and timing. Each week, 2,500 online interviews (from a new sample each week) are completed by consumers who are shown pictures of actual magazine covers for weeklies and monthlies. More than 200 titles are surveyed, with the results providing insight into the issue-to-issue variability of a given title's audience.

What have we learned from nearly two years of online audience surveys? Although there may be very little circulation variation from one issue of a magazine to another, our research reveals evidence that issues that perform uniquely better at the newsstand tend to produce better than average total audience levels. And, not surprisingly, cover-story topics play a definite role in issue-specific audience levels. For example, the subject matter of the June 25, 2007, issue of Fortune (Retire Rich) was the exact same subject a year earlier (June 26, 2006). The former registered an issue-specific index of 137, the latter 120. (This means that the 2007 issue was read by 37% more readers than an average issue of Fortune, while the 2006 issue was read by 20% more readers than an average issue.)

Similarly, actor Johnny Depp was on the July 13, 2006, and May 31, 2007, covers of Rolling Stone. Both issues produced higher than average indices (140 and 128, respectively).

It's not only people and themes but also objects and certain words that appear to generate higher issue readership levels. Take the Shelby GT 500 automobile. Across four automotive titles, issues bearing the car on the cover performed exceptionally well or above average. Meanwhile, the Renovate! exclamation was prominent on the covers of both the September 2006 and September 2007 issues of Metropolitan Home and they helped to generate indices of 113 and 130, respectively. And a Cheap Eats hamburger had similar positive implications for New York magazine (July 30, 2007).

There are other patterns of issue-specific performance arising from our research. Regardless of magazine category, it's readily apparent that issues touting "best of" or "worst of" cover stories resonate with a wide audience. These data strongly suggest that certain cover lines will affect the general circulation performance.

Bad news mentioned on the cover of People--at least in eight instances that we measured--involved issues that had lower audience numbers. From last year, these included Home Invasion Murder, Kidnapped on Vacation, Tragedy in Virginia, Astronaut Love Triangle and Murder in North Carolina. Though such incredulous tragedies as Princess Diana's September 1, 1997, death and the September 11, 2001, attacks are in a league by themselves, these other "bad news"/"poor sell" examples could suggest that cover topics and magazine genres need to be aligned with care to avoid mismatching.

Over time, continuous collection of issue-specific ratings will lead to more robust examinations of the impact of seasonality, color cover, issue topics, and circulation on total issue readership.

Julian Baim, Ph.D., is Mediamark Research & Intelligence executive vp/chief research officer.

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