Who counts ads in Canadian trades?
It has always seemed odd that a Canadian company tracks ad spending for U.S. trade magazines, but can't get Canadian trade publishers to buy its services. According to a story in Mastheadonline (sub req'd) database managment company Inquiry Management Systems (IMS), made a presentation to the Canadian Business Press (CBP) earlier this month and it's being considered; a few years ago, it made a similar pitch and was turned down. (The argument then was that the publishers were already tracking their competitors' ad pages, so why pay someone else to do it?)
IMS's operation in Toronto (it also has offices in New York and London) track the ads in some 2,500 U.S. trade and consumer magazines. The foundation of the system is simple: ranks of people at keyboards tally up the origin, content, size, shape, colour and and position of ads and put them in a vast database. Clients can then use reports derived from this data to assess market share and generate leads for business they are not getting, but their competitors are. That's an oversimplification, but most of the other IMS products derive from this basic data. (It also monitors online advertising and involvement in trade shows.)
IMS provides its services already to CBP's counterpart in the U.S., American Business Media.
The Masthead story suggests that having reliable third party data may be becoming more important to CBP in its lobbying the federal government for continued support through the publications assistance program (PAP) and the Canada Magazine Fund (CMF). CBP President Phil Boyd says a subcommitte of the board will report back on the IMS proposal in March.
[UPDATE: A friend in the consumer magazine business says that ad tracking, third party or otherwise, actually works against the industry's interests because the funders turn around and say 'You've got all these ads, what do you need our help for?' In this, the funders tend to forget that, for consumer magazines at least, the ads pay for the creative and, for a large number of smaller magazines without any ad support (most literary and cultural), government support is vital.]
IMS's operation in Toronto (it also has offices in New York and London) track the ads in some 2,500 U.S. trade and consumer magazines. The foundation of the system is simple: ranks of people at keyboards tally up the origin, content, size, shape, colour and and position of ads and put them in a vast database. Clients can then use reports derived from this data to assess market share and generate leads for business they are not getting, but their competitors are. That's an oversimplification, but most of the other IMS products derive from this basic data. (It also monitors online advertising and involvement in trade shows.)
IMS provides its services already to CBP's counterpart in the U.S., American Business Media.
The Masthead story suggests that having reliable third party data may be becoming more important to CBP in its lobbying the federal government for continued support through the publications assistance program (PAP) and the Canada Magazine Fund (CMF). CBP President Phil Boyd says a subcommitte of the board will report back on the IMS proposal in March.
[UPDATE: A friend in the consumer magazine business says that ad tracking, third party or otherwise, actually works against the industry's interests because the funders turn around and say 'You've got all these ads, what do you need our help for?' In this, the funders tend to forget that, for consumer magazines at least, the ads pay for the creative and, for a large number of smaller magazines without any ad support (most literary and cultural), government support is vital.]
posted by D. B. Scott at
6:00 am
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