Sell my stuff or I'll kill this magazine

At the egghead end of the magazine and advertising business, it is the done thing to talk in every conversation about "accountability", ROI (return on investment) and ROO (return on objective).

Most magazine people are too busy putting out good publications and searching out new readership, but there is an intensifying pressure from agencyland for the medium to prove its claims of effectiveness in pushing product, particularly in relation to other media. Gone are the days of "image" advertising (in case anyone hadn't told you). When 60-70% of our consumer and trade income flows from advertising, this is a game that we all have to play to win. It's no longer enough for advertisers to believe that advertising or magazine advertising works. They want proof.

In yet another attempt to provide such proof, the Magazine Publishers of America today released a downloadable 20-page white paper called Accountability: A Guide to Measuring ROI and ROO Across Media. It is a review of various kinds of research from the field, and has some interesting, if crashingly predictable, things to say about advertising, and magazines.

• Advertising usually works better than expected
• Advertising in several media at the same time improves results
• When you reach saturation in one medium, advertising in another can improve results
• Each medium in the mix contributes to results in its own way
• Magazines excel at increasing "purchasing intent"; 64% of which is attributed to magazine advertising
• Magazines and the internet affecte "positive brand favourability" the most
  

What we particularly like is that, in this discussion, some wonderful terms crop up, including "advertising decay rate" (the rate at which advertising impact on results declines over time) and the "halo effect" (the effect of 'sister' brands in a corporate portfolio on results for the brand being studied).