FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

IMS to launch "The Index Of Magazine Advertising"

Toronto, ON - ABM Spring Meeting Special Issue of Media Business, By Matthew Schwartz - Concluding that in an ROI-obsessed age it should do more than just compare the number of magazine ad pages from one year to another, Inquiry Management Systems (IMS) in September will launch "The Index of Magazine Advertising." It will be added to IMS' existing Magazine Health Watch online product, leveraging a database of more than 19 million records.

The new index, which has been in development for four months, includes six new data fields:

  • Number of ad pages per issue.
  • Number of companies advertising per issue.
  • Number of ad pages per company per issue.
  • Number of new advertisers per issue.
  • Number of advertisers increasing/decreasing their advertising pages per issue.
  • Number of SRDS-defined markets increasing/decreasing their page counts.
"To limit [analysis] "to the number of ad pages would not be an accurate way to answer the question 'How healthy is the magazine industry?'" said Martin Hochstein, president of IMS, which monitors the ad activity of roughly 2,500 magazines in approximately 200 SRDS-defined markets.

Hochstein said IMS next month will e-mail as many people as possible "in all sectors of the industry," soliciting their input into the weighting of each index component. After that, IMS will hammer out a preliminary index for publishers to beta test, probably sometime in June, Hochstein said. However, via IMS's Web site, publishers will be able to make their recommendations on the weight of each component starting Tuesday.

The index, which will be updated quarterly, will be available for free as part of the Magazine Health Watch Web page (www.mhw.ims.ca). IMS will also publish a free quarterly newsletter analyzing changes in the index.

IMS is also considering producing customized versions of the index on individual properties, which it will sell to publishers and media investment bankers.