GfK MRI is in the process of reprinting and re-mailing the Fall 2012 pocketpiece. 

This item is being reprinted in order to include the corrected circulations for Garden Design, USA Today and Wall Street Journal. While all audience estimates remain unchanged, these changes in circulation will change RPC estimates as well.  These corrections have already been made in MEMRI and/or through your online service provider.

The following revisions have been made:

Please be sure to use only the revised document when you receive it and discard the previous version.

Please contact your representative if you have any questions.

GfK MRI has changed several of its magazine release criteria beginning with the Spring 2012 Report.  These changes reduce the minimum number of unweighted readers for a magazine to 135 and increase relative error of the projected audience to 30%, for those titles with intabs between 135 and 155. Both these changes are reflected in the Magazine Release Standards document that is included with the Spring 2012 codebook.  The rationale for these changes is based on expected trends in magazine readership.  We anticipate that, over a period of time, some print readers will move exclusively to digital reading.  In that event, the number of claimed readers may decrease.  At the same time, GfK MRI wants to ensure continuous reporting of magazines that have been in our study for years and have generally been at the lower end of in-tab requirements.  The net effect of these changes in the Spring 2012 report is continued release of 2 titles that fell substantially below the old release standards and release of 1 title unreported in the Fall 2011 study.

After conducting qualitative research and a pilot study of more than 1,000 respondents to evaluate wording changes in its magazine audience methodology, GfK MRI revised the wording of the questionnaire to capture looking at a magazine brand’s website and reading of the publication’s digital editions or apps.  We introduced this change in March 2011 and we shared one wave of results in the Fall 2011 Report.  The objective of the new questions was to provide the industry with a measure of the “total brand footprint” for each released publication.  This “total brand footprint” included website visitation estimates, as well as digital editions and apps. 

As we approach the release of two full waves of interviewing (i.e., one year) in the Spring 2012 report, GfK MRI has been reviewing its reporting standards, especially as they relate to website audience estimates.  This notice discusses the relevant issues regarding website audience measurement and communicates our intended reporting guidelines for the Spring 2012 Report.

Magazine Websites in the Survey of the American Consumer

In our deliberations, we assessed the utility of estimates derived using a self-reported website audience methodology, especially compared with audience data from the passively-collected Internet audience measures provided by Nielsen Online NetView and comScore Media Metrix, respectively.  GfK MRI acknowledged previously that self-reported website audiences would be potentially quite different from either of the aforementioned Internet audience measurement services (see GfK MRI’s Notice to Clients, Fall 2011).  While there is a number of compelling research explanations for these differences, we also recognize that the passively-collected methodology is viewed as the appropriate audience measure for the Internet.  (This understanding is reflected in the value we place on our fusion between Nielsen Online NetView and GfK MRI’s National study and our upcoming fusion with comScore Media Metrix.)

In acknowledging that self-reported data for website audiences are perceived as qualitative rather than as a currency, we necessarily assessed the value of combining our paper version audience measure (i.e., the magazine and national newspaper audience currency) with a non-currency website audience number to provide a total brand footprint.  We have concluded that providing a net unduplicated estimate of these two media behaviors most likely introduces more confusion than clarity for the end user. 

An additional issue in combining print website audiences with the paper version audiences is the absence of a commonly measured timeframe for website behavior.  Unlike audience measures in the Nielsen and comScore products (mentioned above) that use a common 30 day time period, GfK MRI’s website audiences for publications are not based on a common timeframe.  GfK MRI’s variable timeframe for different publication website audiences places any total brand footprint estimates that includes websites on different playing fields for magazines of different publication frequencies.  Comparisons are difficult to evaluate. 

Spring 2012 changes in reporting

Accordingly, we will release all magazine and national newspaper website audience estimates that meet reporting standards as separate measures, and not as part of a “total brand reach.”  We firmly believe these website profiles can provide valuable directional and consumer profile information for our clients.      Instead of “total brand reach” we will release an estimate of “Print and Digital Edition Reach.”  This new variable will be a net estimate of hard-copy/paper reading and digital editions/apps that essentially  share the same or similar editorial as the hard-copy/paper edition.  “Print and Digital Edition Reach” will not include websites or other measures related to the magazine’s  or national newspaper’s brand, such as visiting the publication’s social-networking site.

GfK MRI is making the following additional data available in the Fall 2011 Report:

•        Average Ad Noting Audiences
•        Average Actions taken Audiences (as a result of noting an ad)

These additional data are developed by modeling results from GfK MRI’s AdMeasure product onto the average-issue audiences from the Fall 2011 Report at the respondent level.    The modeling procedure, which is described in detail in the Technical Guide, is conducted on a magazine-by-magazine basis and uses variables that predict the likelihood of noting an ad or taking an action as a result of noting an ad.  Since these additions represent integrating results from a non-MRC accredited study (AdMeasure) with an ongoing accredited study (GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer), these data are not MRC accredited. 

For additional information about the rationale for using specific variables in the modeling, please refer to:

White Paper:  “Internet Measurement of Ad-noting: Sampling and Statistical Issues” 

http://www.gfkmri.com/PDF/WWRS-MRI_InternetMeasurementOfAdNoting.pdf

This note details the data from the new multiplatform audience questions that will be released in the Fall 2011 report.

In Wave 65 (March – October 2011 interviewing period), GfK MRI introduced a number of questions about reading or looking into print brands on computers, tablets, e-readers and other mobile devices.  The new methodology includes a change in the preamble to the magazine reading section, additional visual and verbal stimuli to prompt recall and new qualitative readership questions for electronic devices.  (We have already released a white paper describing these changes and the results from a pilot test conducted last year.  This report is available on GfK MRI’s website at www.gfkmri.com.)  The comprehensive audience data will be reported on two levels.  They are:

• Any print audience:  We will continue to report the print audience for all magazines that meet release standards on all available software provider systems and in a “Readers-Per-Copy Card” (or “Pocketpiece”).  These data reflect the continued recent reading methodology that GfK MRI has employed since its inception.

• A total multi-platform audience:  We will report the net audience for print brands across all the platforms and versions (i.e., websites, digital reproductions, apps and other branded apps, text only) measured in the study.  These data will only be available for one wave of the Fall 2011 report and will be noted in that manner.  Any user will need to scale the Wave 65 total multi-platform estimates to the population for proper assessment.  We will also report total multi-platform audiences for magazine groups.

Users of these data should note that the software provider’s location of the readership measures will be changed beginning with the Fall 2011 report.  Please consult your software provider and the Fall 2011 codebook for further information.

In addition to the changes in the magazine measurement procedures, GfK MRI changed the wording of the initial newspaper question to include only paper version readership.  Electronic versions of The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are measured after all magazine readership questions are asked.

GfK MRI will not release estimates for individual platform audiences.  Our continuous in-wave evaluation of tablet, e-reader and mobile device audiences suggests that respondent counts are not yet sufficiently stable for individual platform reporting.  We expect these audiences to grow in the upcoming waves and we will release these data once reporting standards are met.  We will also continue to compare responses against the availability of brands on individual platforms to ensure the validity of responses.

Magazine website levels are more robust than data from the other electronic platforms beyond print.  However, the stability of these data varies substantially among the magazines and warrants further review before any individual magazine data will be released.   GfK MRI employs a recall method, which by the very nature of the questioning procedure, can produce results differing from passively collected data from services such as Nielsen’s and comScore’s web audience measurement, respectively.  (Users should be aware that GfK MRI has developed a fused database with Nielsen’s web audience measurement service and is in the process of completing a fusion with comScore’s web audience measurement service.)  As part of our ongoing analysis, we will explore these potential differences. 

One final note:  As earlier stated, GfK MRI removed the “interest in advertising” and “actions taken” questions from the National Study.  In their place, we plan on integrating individual magazine topline “ad noting” and “actions taken” data from Starch AdMeasure with the National study.  These data will not be available with the first release of print estimates in November.  The details of this integration, including submitting this process for MRC accreditation and timing, will soon follow.