With great interest and enthusiasm, I have read the results of a new research study by Sanoma Media België. Sanoma België is a magazine-only publisher, but for this research in particular, it also considered newspapers.

“Does media brand leverage really exist?” That was the crucial question in the research.

Sanoma discovered viable metrics and valuable diagnostics of commercial return of media brands. On the basis of these metrics, researchers calculated an index per title.

The calculation of that score indicates the quality of a media contact: the engagement index! This index takes into consideration the strength of the media brand, the inspirational surrounding context, and the higher advertising effectiveness.

The study is based on 3,000 computer-assisted Web interviews (TNS online panel representative 15+), representing about five media types (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and online), and +/-100 media brands for a total of more than 13,000 title observations.

If we compare the results of magazines (newspaper magazines included) and newspapers with television and radio, we conclude the following: 

From this, it becomes apparent that advertising engagement magazines and magazine supplements have a much better score than the classic media. Also, the difference between Dutch-speaking (north of Belgium) and French-speaking (south of Belgium) is substantial.

The more a media brand can offer a natural habitat for publicity, the higher the impact of advertised products in that media brand!

Also remarkable is that advertising effectiveness is different per target group, but media engagement is much more stable, which is demonstrated in the graph below.

Next to the general conclusions, this study can also be used for plotting individual results per media brand. In the scheme below, all media-type are shown on both axes for Dutch-speaking Belgian media brands. Newspapers are indicated in purple.

General conclusion: The more people are engaged with a media brand, the higher the impact of advertised products in that media brand.

With many thanks to Bart De Pauw of Sanoma Media België.

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