The best marketing campaigns are ideally mixed, just like your favourite cocktail.
Australian brands and agencies spent $9 billion on digital advertising in 2019. This figure confirms what you probably already know — leveraging digital media in your marketing mix is important.
In the world of advertising – and moreso that of working in an agency – if I had a dollar for every time, I heard a client, friend or even colleague say… ‘but nobody watches television anymore,’ I could honestly nearly retire.
These conversations occur often… and likely on the back of presentation of new consumer and media research, and the recommendation of tweaks to a client’s advertising strategy based on this research. Or even more often upon meetings with new clients or potential clients that have previously developed their own advertising strategy.
Latest results from Roy Morgan Research have revealed that major newsprint readership is continuing to decline.
National publication The Australian Saturday edition has fallen from 686,000 in September 2015 to 638,000 in September 2016. Likewise, their Monday to Friday edition has also dropped, with a loss of 11,000 readers.
Roy Morgan research have this week released results for Australian newspaper readerships for the last 12 months as at March 2016 and it’s no surprise that major mastheads around the country have fallen in readership.
It can often be a creative challenge to come up with a print ad that is going to work… firstly it needs to get noticed and secondly it needs to get results.
The Newspaper Works has recently conducted a survey on the effectiveness of the creative designs in print ads, and how they work to achieve results and brand awareness for the advertiser. The findings are interesting and provide some great insights to advertisers.
The core questions in their surveys covered areas including the look of the design itself, the headline, whether there was a clear offer or not, whether it had great images etc and also investigated the action taken afterwards such as search or visit online, phone, buy or try etc.
The primary creative element that came out of the surveys as the most influential part of a press ad was the “headline”. This one fundamental ingredient of the design proves to have the biggest effect on what happens next. While many won’t read on after the headline, if you get it right, the consumers you are targeting will continue to read on and have potentially started their path to purchase.
The second biggest draw card in the creative department proved to be good copy. Your core consumers will always be hungry for information and The Newspaper Works found that convincing copy is strongly linked to the trial of a new product.
Another result although expected, highlighted the need for a print ad to stand out from the rest. With so many ads out there and so many competitors in the market it is becoming increasing difficult to do so. However, the more attention grabbing and ‘different’ your ad is, the more likely a consumer will harbour positive feelings towards your brand.
Finally and as equally vital to the success of your print ad, is what not to do. Having too much info or clutter in your print ad will not entice a consumer to read or even notice your ad. Along with having a boring or bland ad, these no-no’s can actually prove to have an adverse effect and will leave consumers with a negative perception of your brand.
If you effectively incorporate these key findings into your next press ad you will be on the right path to achieving brand awareness, sales and positive results. QA’s creative team enjoy working with our clients to create strong press ads that achieve real results.
The future of print audience measurement is called EMMA (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia)… but what is it?
EMMA launced at the start of the new financial year and is designed to provide a complete picture of how people read and engage with newspapers and magazines across print, online, smarphones and tablets.
EMMA was developed by an independent research company and has been built in response to agencies and advertisers needs for greater transparency, accuracy and frequency of data.
This is how EMMA works… 54,000 people are surveyed a year, mainly recruited by phone, but around 8% through door-to-door methods. They will then complete an initial online survey taking them around 45 minutes, with around half completing a secondary survey looking at consumer habits in various categories. They are then sent an online link, where they complete a five minute survey about what they have read and visited in the proceeding day. This data is then extrapolated to give a readership number for each masthead across the mediums.
EMMA also sees for the first time around 130 regional papers, normally too small to be surveyed, a readership number, using Census data around demographics and the survey data.
Why it’s better?
The launch of EMMA already started with a collection of over 18 months’ worth of data, featuring a number of significant innovations and enhancements:
• An in-depth database of all newspaper formats capturing data across all platforms
• Branded sectional data within newspapers
• Contemporary segmentation and new insights into product categories
For us in an Advertising Agency, the data will more accurately portray the audiences figures, enabling us to respond to our clients briefs more effectively and providing the best environment to bring advertisers closer to their customers.
We hope you enjoy reading the Sunny Media blog. For more information please visit our full website www.sunnymedia.com.au
Digital subscriptions were thought to be the great savior for newspapers however the first round of stats for combined print and digital sales have been released and so far only The Australian is moving in the right direction.
Circulation figures for the June quarter have just been released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), alongside the first year-on-year stats for combined print, digital and package sales (masthead sales).
In total, the print market saw a 10.9% year-on-year decline in sales, with News Corp Australia titles dropping 9.7% in total and Fairfax 16.4%.
The declines in masthead sales are not as steep as the declines in print-only sales, indicating digital sales are making some inroads. However, digital growth is not yet sufficient at present to balance out print circulation decline.
Looking to print-only circulation figures, the results in the June quarter were particularly bleak. Not a single newspaper recorded positive growth, and across News Corp and Fairfax the best result was a 6.8% decline recorded by Fairfax’s weekday edition of The Australian Financial Review. The strongest result across the whole market was recorded by West Australian Newspapers’ West Australian, with a 3.8% drop.
Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald experienced the largest print decline, sliding 17%.
Newspaper inserted magazines also saw major declines across the board, with all audited titles seeing circulation drops. The total NIMs market fell 12%.
CLICK HERE to check out the complete set of ABC Circulation figures released August 2013 of Metropolitan Newspapers, Magzines & Inserts.