Press ads are still effective
Despite increasing competition from new media platforms, print newspaper advertising still has a place in today’s society, and what’s more, it's still effective.
This is the conclusion of the Optimum Impression research project conducted by Omnicom Media Group (OMG) on the most effective form of newspaper advertising. OMG first conducted the project in 2000 and updated it last in 2003.
OMG Malaysia Managing Director Andreas Vogiatzakis said there had been an increase in newspaper circulation from 800,000 in 2003 to 4.8 million now.
“Readership at approximately 8.2 million to date has also risen from 51% (in 2003) to 56% now, with 32% spending more time reading newspapers,” he said.
More than 100 representatives from media agencies and advertising firms were present for the release of the findings. The study conducted over a period of two weeks in August 2009 exposed 1,023 newspaper readers aged between 15 and 54 to 2,452 different ads in 15 main newspapers – a total of 14,522 ad exposures.
Respondents were asked three questions the day after they were exposed to the ads to determine in percentage an advertisement’s effectiveness in being recalled (Ad Noting), getting readers’ attention (Ad Read), and having the correct brand attributed to it (Brand Recall).
The findings indicated that newspaper advertising in Malaysia was still effective.
“Despite increased exposure to marketing messages across different media channels, the ad noting percentage of newspaper advertisements by readers remains unchanged from 2003 at 57%,” said Guy Hearn, communications director of Insights Asia Pacific, which is part of OMG and which oversaw the study.
“The study shows that bigger advertisements score highest in terms of ad noting, ad read and brand recall – with a full page yielding 21% higher noting than a quarter page.”
Hearn listed four other golden rules of effective newspaper advertising – colour pages, positioning advertisements on a right hand page, avoiding clutter and creativity in design.
“Creative buys have been proven to increase an advertisement’s noting by 15% and brand recall by 25%,” he said. One of the most popular ads is the “sandwich” that can increase noting by 40%.
Readers were found to pay more attention to promotional ads, and homemakers paid more attention to newspaper ads than expected of them.