Magazine publishers now have a tool to help them offer performance guarantees based on a publication’s total audience, an ad campaign’s total advertising audience or an ad campaign’s actions taken audience. GfK MRI's new Audience Risk Manager is the industry's first syndicated solution for constructing audience guarantees.

The Audience Risk Manager, a Web-based system, uses historical GfK MRI magazine data to estimate the probability that a given advertising schedule will achieve a given audience level. Its built-in flexibility allows buyers and sellers to choose the historical performance of magazine titles, magazine genres or advertised brands as the reference point for building custom guarantees, such as:

1. Guaranteeing how many people will read the issues of a magazine in which a particular ad campaign appears.
2. Guaranteeing how many people will recall a particular ad campaign appearing in given issues of a magazine.
3. Guaranteeing how many people will take an action as the result of seeing a particular ad campaign in given issues of a magazine.

“For too long, magazines have been judged on how many copies were printed and where they are distributed, not on who reads them and what they do as a result,” said Nina Link, president & CEO of the Association of Magazine Media (MPA). “It remains the job of the creative to move the reader to action, but the GfK MRI Audience Risk Manager allows magazines to leapfrog over performance metrics offered by other media by guaranteeing on audiences further down the purchase funnel. Our hope is that the Audience Risk Manager will help magazines more effectively compete with other major media for advertising campaigns.”

While paid circulation remains an important measure, marketers place their advertising in magazines to reach and sell their target audience. The Audience Risk Manager represents a major step toward fulfilling the longstanding desire of many advertisers and agencies: that magazines transition from guaranteeing a certain level of circulation to offering performance metrics closer to those used by television and other major media.

For more information, please contact us.

Osborn Barr helps make things grow—literally. A marketing agency whose clients target farmers and rural Americans, Osborn Barr helps many of the agricultural industry's largest seed, crop protection, machinery, tire and building companies grow their businesses. As users of GfK MRI data since 2009, Osborn Barr takes insights beyond the data's ever-important utility for media planning to inform their staff and clients on consumer behaviors and attitudes. "Knowledge of a target's product preferences and daily activities helps us form a complete picture of the people we need to reach," said Osborn Barr Account Supervisor Lisa Bocklage.  "GfK MRI allows us to integrate key details into many areas of marketing—from creative concept development to customer premiums."

Data for details in campaign planning and execution.  Osborn Barr has found that GfK MRI data on leisure activities are especially useful for creative aspects of campaign planning as well as investing in contests and appreciation gifts. For example, when  planning a "road show" using branded vehicles to display ad messages throughout targeted communities, the agency taps into GfK MRI to identify the top-ranking cars or trucks owned by area residents. "We need to confirm that vehicles in the campaign are the same types of cars or trucks area residents drive,” said Bocklage. "Selecting the right vehicle to display our client's message can make the difference between the client's investment resonating or backfiring."

GfK MRI data sometimes confirm what the staff know intuitively about their audiences, but the ability to back up those insights with hard numbers lends a higher level of confidence to processes throughout the agency. For instance, GfK MRI insights confirmed that rural adults participate in fewer leisure activities than other Americans. "Off-hours for this target are a much-valued luxury; if, in our creative, we can show how brand A will make that leisure time especially enjoyable, we will likely strike a chord," said Bocklage.

Even creative decisions such as selecting wardrobe for a photo shoot can be informed by GfK MRI's purchase data. For example, when an Osborn Barr artistic director makes wardrobe choices, he/she may dress models in the same brand of jeans most often purchased by the intended audience to connect the brand to the consumer.  

A token of our appreciation. GfK MRI data also are used to zero in on customer appreciation gifts and premiums. "We look for products that complement aspects of targets' lives, like leisure activities, when deciding where to invest,” said Bocklage. They've determined, for example, that some of the top-ranking activities among rural residents are:

• Dining out
• Reading
• Playing cards

Clients can use this knowledge to maximize their give-away investments with, in this case, gift certificates for a dinner out or even something as modest as a branded deck of cards—both of which relate to activities valued by customers.

In the same vein, when a client participates in a trade event, Osborn Barr uses GfK MRI to look for the brands of candy their customers prefer so they know what treats to put in the candy bowl. FYI—Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Coke, Mountain Dew and Trident or Wrigley’s gum score high among rural Americans.

"Details like these may seem like just that: details.  But the more you know about your customers and their preferences, the better you will be at reaching out to them—and the more responsive they will be in return," concluded Bocklage.

Consumers looking for immediate information and money-saving deals can "snap to it" and take pictures of QR Codes to access content. These 2-D barcodes let users instantly connect to information—including a marketer's website—from mobile devices, and they have been used by about 9 percent of U.S. adults who own smartphones. As seen with other new technologies, it's the early adopters who are leading the way.

GfK MRI data show that "snappers" are "Category Influentials"—consumers who are deeply familiar with certain product categories, based on their answers to the Category INFLUENTIALS battery in GfK MRI's Survey of the American Consumer™. They frequently make recommendations across broad social networks, are highly trusted and are word-of-mouth-leaders. Snappers are considerably more likely than typical adults to be influencers for new technology, home electronics and mobile phones, as well as alcoholic beverages, fashion, politics and more.

"QR Code Snappers may be doing a lot more for your brand than just accessing content via the codes, they may also be advocates for your products and services," said Anne Marie Kelly, E.V.P. Marketing & Strategic Planning, GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence.

For more information about GfK MRI data on QR code users, please contact us, and if you missed it, read a post in Forbes that also cites our QR Code data.

Julie Erbe Manager / Web Training & Advertiser Services

What do Survey of the American Consumer clients and political candidates have in common? They both narrow their bases to make a point. The base in a data analysis is the universe of consumers under consideration. The default base in MEMRI is All Adults and it is used by clients just about all of the time. However, it's not always the best base to show how segments of a target group possess unique attributes.

For example, let's use a base of All Adults to compare participation in public activities among adults as a whole versus adults who vote. No big surprises here—the findings confirm what we'd expect. Voters in all age groups are more likely than typical adults to participate in public activities.

But what if you want to only consider voters in your analysis? It's simple: just change the base to Voters, and a different story will emerge. For example, with our base of All, 18-34 year olds who vote over-index for three activities: fundraising, signing a petition and attending a public meeting, compared to the average adult. However, when we change the base to Voters, their participation, compared to the typical voter, is average. Another example: with a base of All, adults 55+ who vote are 13% more likely than typical adults to have gone to a public meeting, but when the base is changed to Voters, we see that the target is, in fact less likely (Index 74) than other voters to have gone to a meeting. 

When selecting bases, remember to use a base of 21+ for analyses that include consumption of alcoholic beverages. Also, use a base of total shoppers/homemakers for data from the homemaker section of the questionnaire.

Learn more about GfK MRI data—best practices, common mistakes, advanced uses, and more by attending GfK MRI's online webinars led by me—Julie Erbe. Please send me a note if you would like to attend the webinars but have not received evites.

At the exact moment Tablet owners are exposed to an ad, where they are, what they're doing and who they are with all come together to affect the impact of the message. USA TouchPoints has released data that, among other insights, report four learnings about the context of Tablet use:

1. Home is where the Tablet is.
The majority of Tablet use takes place in the home, at work and during travel.

• At home - 68%
• At work - 28%
• While in the car/traveling - 25%.

2. Time of day for Tablet use differs by gender.
More men than women use their devices first thing in the morning. During the day, usage among men and women is about even. But in late afternoon, we start to see that women use their Tablets more, and that continues through 2 a.m.

3. Tablet owners are media multi-taskers.
There's ample cross platform opportunity to reach Tablet audiences. During certain times of the day, they are especially likely to use Tablets and other media simultaneously. For example, almost 60% of Tablet users watch Primetime TV while tapping away.

Choice of simultaneous media differs between the sexes, too. Women prefer watching TV while using Tablets whereas men prefer multi-tasking with computers.

4. Co-viewing occasions abound.
The potential to reach Tablet owners while they are in the company of others may be a windfall for marketers interested in finding co-viewing occasions. More than 40% use their devices with a spouse in the room, and 36% use them with a child present. These findings also differ when gender comes into play:

USA TouchPoints is a syndicated consumer insights and cross-platform media use study developed by Media Behavior Institute - a company in which GfK MRI is a minority shareholder.  For more information about USA TouchPoints, contact Executive Director, Research & Analytics Media Behavior Institute Kevin Moeller.

GfK MRI Presents at the ARF Audience Measurement 7.0

Coming to the ARF Audience Measurement 7.0 conference in June?  If yes, add us to your agenda.

GfK MRI Learning Session: Consumer Engagement with Digital Devices

Risa Becker, SVP Research Operations, will share insights from several studies on consumers' use of Tablets, mobile and other digital devices.

Research Quality & Innovation: Online Surveys on a Mobile Device

Michal Galin, EVP Research, and Britta Ware, VP Research Solutions, Meredith Corporation will discuss how U.S. researchers address the question "Do Behaviors and Results Change If an Online Survey Is Conducted on a Mobile Device?"

We will also have a booth on the 6th floor. Please stop by and visit. For time, place and other details, visit the ARF website.

Retail Stores And Categories Added To New Release Of GfK MRI Focus: Retail

The 2012 release of GfK MRI Focus: Retail, available this summer, brings marketers store-level data on specific purchase behaviors, attitudes that drive traffic and post-shopping activities of consumers. With the addition of Ace Hardware, True Value Hardware, Amazon.com and eBay.com, as well as Food and Household Cleaning Products categories, the study now measures 26 national brick & mortar retailers that have significant online operations and consumer purchases across 16 categories.

For more information, please contact us.