How Does a 4:1 ROI Sound?

starbucks-magazine-ads_78073Nielsen study shows that “every media buy would benefit from the addition of print advertising.”

The results are clear: “By generating benchmarks that allow marketers to compare the return they should expect from every media dollar, [a comprehensive study] clearly shows that every media buy would benefit from the addition of print advertising.”

That’s what Linda Thomas Brooks, head of the Association of Magazine Media (MPA), has to say about the recent Nielsen (NCS) report that proves magazine ads offer the best return on ad dollars.

Brooks was quoted in a press release from the organization, published in Publishing Executive, citing information on the comprehensive study of advertising returns.

What it found is clear: Magazines deliver the best return on ad spend, with an average return of $3.94 for every dollar spent.

Not video, with its overinflated viewership, or digital, with its rampant ad fraud. It’s magazine media that proves its worth over time and across categories

The study was extensive, running from 2004-2015 and analyzing 1,400 campaigns from 450 brands.

“The NCS data set integrates 90 million households of in-store purchase data, a subset of [the] data warehouse, with each of the media platforms in a single source to determine the incremental sales impact of advertising,” the release explains.

The study included new methodologies for measuring the impact that the so-called “secondary print magazine audiences” – pass-alongs – have on sales.

“This new approach provides the ability to measure cross-media impact and captures print magazines’ total audience allowing publishers to accurately compare print magazines’ contribution to sales versus other media,” the release explains.

Publishers are thrilled, like Caryn Klein of Time Inc. who says, “With the inclusion of secondary audience impact, it now places print on an equal playing field with other media and we can unequivocally prove the importance of including print in the mix given the strong ROAS that it provides for our marketing partners.”

For magazine media brands and fans of print magazines, this is surely welcome news. As more agencies say pfffft to digital advertising and others call video the next bubble to burst, studies like this go a long way to providing a return to advertising sanity.