sourcemediagroup
@sourcemediagroup
sourcemediagroup
december 2015
As a valued current or potential business partner of Source Media Group, you are a member of an exclusive club. And one of the benefits you receive as a member of the SMG club — in addition to great advertising opportunities — is this regular newsletter. From expert advertising advice; to upcoming events and publications; to profiles of our friendly, helpful staff; it’s all to assist you in getting the best return on investment for your marketing dollar. Your questions and comments regarding this newsletter or any of our publications may be emailed to newsletter@sourcemediagroup.ca ■
Self-educating
Learning where to learn about magazines
T
here’s an old saying that goes something like this: “If you give a person a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach them how to fish, they eat for a lifetime”. Well, magazine research is kind of like that. You can rely on other people to feed you various numbers and statistics, numbers you need to do your job well, or you can ‘self-educate’ yourself on where to find what you need. When you’re talking about magazines, there are several sources you can go to for the critical information you need to make informed advertising decisions. For the bigger, national and international newsstand titles, this might mean subscribing to CARD (Canadian Advertising Rates and Data) or simply asking for an ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) report. For most smaller local and regional publications, however, such formalities are not the norm. In fact, it’s more likely than not that the local magazine in question will
not be distributed via paid newsstands and subscriptions but by ‘controlled’ circulation. From an advertiser’s viewpoint either method, or some combination of the two is fine, as long as the number of copies actually picked up is strong. That’s why it’s important for savvy advertisers to make the distinction between total print run and pick-up percentage. For example, with our own Condo Living and New Home Living magazines, with 25,000 printed and more than 20,000 picked-up our pick-up rate of 80+ per cent is considered high by industry standards. In fact, our pick-up is more than some of our nearest competitor’s total print run. And, with more than 1,000 locations, we’ve only got three or four magazines left in each rack per month. One each would be perfect, but that could be asking a little much. It’s especially true for newsstand magazines, where distribution contract demands usually mean printing and providing distributors with many more magazines than are ever actually
sold. Trust me, we had a newsstand magazine a few years back, RESORTS, and it was available in Chapters and such, which was cool, it was even a Finalist for Best Newsstand Issue, New Magazine in 2005. The problem was the sellthrough in the stores was about 10 per cent which, we were assured, was ‘normal’. Anyways, most smaller local magazines