Japan Magazine Advertising Association-Magazine Advertising Data

3. Engagement Between Readers and Magazines(1)
Magazines are media that engage with their readers, as proven by the fact that [magazines often have "loyal" readers?]. Engagement can be described as "the closeness and relationship of trust formed when a reader experiences a feeling of satisfaction when a magazine meets his or her expectations."
Nowadays, when customers choose magazines to advertise in, they tend not to look at circulation, but rather select magazines whose readership includes large numbers of the people they are targeting, and that engage so deeply with their readers that the advertisements they contain are completely accepted by them.

But what kind of data can be used to express this engagement?
Unlike quantitative data for fact-finding such as circulation, the percentage of subscribers who actually read the magazine, and the composition of the readership in terms of age and sex, it is difficult to define indicators for measuring the degree of engagement. Nevertheless, MAGASCENE offers several engagement-related indicators, such as one that gauges readers’ "loyalty" to magazines, and another that assesses their "degree of contact" with them.
Here we will use the example of readers of magazine A and B, both of which are aimed at teenage girls, to introduce some engagement-related indicators.

(1) Regular-reader ratio: the proportion of readers who "bought and read the magazine"

This indicator shows readers' basic loyalty towards a magazine.
It indicates the degree to which readers value the magazine as an information source.

Magazine A		Magazine B

(2) Careful reader ratio: the proportion of readers who "read almost every page"

The higher the figure for this indicator is, the more likely the magazine is to be read thoroughly by its readers.
It is a useful indicator when selecting magazines suitable for hosting tie-up ads or other advertisements.

Magazine A		Magazine B

(3) Every-issue reader ratio: the proportion of readers who "read every issue"

MAGASCENE obtains this data by finding out how many of the last six issues were read.
Like the regular-reader ratio, it measures basic loyalty, and is useful when selecting magazines for hosting a series of advertisements.

Magazine A		Magazine B

(4) Rereading: indicates the extent to which a single copy of a magazine is reread.

It is a useful indicator for selecting magazines whose readers are likely to come into contact with a single advertisement more than once.

Magazine A (Often reread)		Magazine B (Often reread)

(5) Desire to continue reading: indicates the degree to which readers want to read the magazine again in the future

This indicator also measures basic loyalty towards the magazine concerned.
It shows the degree of expectation, trust, good feelings, etc. towards the magazine.

Magazine A (Will read every issue in the future)		Magazine B (Will read every issue in the future)

Data from the MAGASCENE 2007 survey from Video Research Ltd.

You can also use more familiar indicators, such as the number of people sharing a copy and the average number of the same magazines to be read, as well as situations such as where magazines are read, to assess how people relate to magazines.

By looking at these indicators, you can see that the nature of engagement differs even among magazines of the same genre, like the two we used in the example above. Like reader profiles, they indicate the individuality of a magazine. This means that taking proper account of engagement when running advertising campaigns can produce higher quality advertising outcomes.