Men and older readers are likely to find newspaper ads more informative
and credible than TV ads, according to a survey of weekday national
newspaper readers.
However, 19 per cent of such readers agree strongly that there are too
many ads in newspapers and 20 per cent feel that most newspaper ads are
boring to look at.
About 48 per cent of the people questioned are buying fewer papers or
buying them less frequently, according to the study, conducted for J.
Walter Thompson by the Beck Consultancy.
In quality titles, colour ads appear to cut through clutter best,
although solus scores are higher overall. This is not true in the
tabloids, where clutter is seen to be a real problem wherever it
appears.
Although colour has a significantly higher score than mono, in quality
papers mono pages do better than colour pages. Again, this is not true
of tabloids.
Although facing matter might be a strong selling point in magazines, the
study found it seems to have little effect in newspapers.
JWT has also attempted to measure ‘value’ in the TV market by creating
different indices for such factors as share of break, position in break
and centre versus end break. The findings showed that the first ad in a
short centre break would give a very high score, for example.
James Walker, the media development director at JWT, said: ‘This is the
first time that research has looked at these factors working together.
We will be writing our research findings into software that will sit on
everyone’s desks.’
