New research shows high "net" reach for magazines and their websites

New research in the U.S. shows that there is relatively little cannibalization between printed magazines and their web sites, and that much of their audience is "net," or unduplicated reach.

The findings come out of a new collaboration of magazine audience researcher Mediamark Research Inc. and online audience researcher Nielsen//NetRatings, according to a story in MediaDaily News.

The research, which fuses, or directly integrates the databases of the two companies to create the equivalent of a single-source, is one of an influx of new applications in data integration and so-called fusion, which are transforming the art of media planning and buying....Dubbed Net//MRI, the new product seems to give top billing to NetRatings, but also is an allusion to its result: the "net" audience that is pure to the print and online editions of magazines. What it shows, is that on average, 83% of the visitors of the web sites of 23 large circulation monthly magazine accessed those magazines' content exclusively online.

The companies did not disclose what percentage of the print editions' audiences accessed the magazine content exclusively in print, but they did say that there was a considerable range among the Web-only percentages of individual magazine titles - from 65% to 96% - highlighting the need for this new form of research.

Whether it's necessity provoking invention or whether the time is right, the media and research business in the U.S. is coming up with new ways of providing business-building data that proves the power of print and online offerings of magazine companies.

A related story in MediaDaily News says that the big media and research shops are paying more attention to sophisticated "clustering" analysis and integrating of net and print audience data, as well as merging that data with individual clients' customer databases. (This is not altogether new; smart publishers have always paid attention to psychographics and clustering and have worked with advertising clients in the past to do selective binding and delivery of print products. But now, when every magazine has a website and such add-ons as podcasts and e-letters, the whole question of unduplicated reach has heated up. And the scale is interesting.)

Michael Oddi, executive vice president-direct response and media integration at KSL Media, says that the key to making the integration work is using a segmentation system developed that clusters 120 million U.S. households into 70 discrete geographic clusters based on a variety of lifestyle and economic criteria.

"It divides people not just on where they live, but based on their life stages: When they've graduated from school, when they get married, when they have children, when their children go away to college, etc. Life stages are the most telling thing, because it reveals when people have money to spend on certain things. And if you take that and you marry with something like MRI, you really get a sense of who your target is and where you can best reach them with media."