Magazines Boast Highest Levels of Consumer Engagement

Magazines

June 2011 -- Magazines boast the highest levels of consumer engagement of any media, according to research performed  by global neuroscience research company Neuro-Insight on behalf of Australia's leading magazine publisher, ACP Magazines

In a novel approach to measuring the magazine reading experience, rather than simply ask readers how engaged they felt with their magazines, neuroscience was used to quantify how deeply immersed and engaged consumers actually became -- the intensity of their emotional reactions in terms of like/dislike, their engagement and attention levels, and whether or not what they read becomes encoded in long-term memory.
 

The neuroscience research using scientifically validated technology was conducted with 200 Australian women, ages 18-64,  in November, 2010 using 11 ACP magazine titles.  Eight key areas of brain functionality were measured on a second-by-second basis to determine which areas of the brain had heightened neurological activity, and to what degree.  In addition, a parallel study using traditional quantitative methodology was carried out to both verify the neuroscience results and allow further probing of specific questions.
 

The average scores on key measures – such as engagement, like/dislike, emotional intensity, attention and memory – were higher than those for any other media or advertising measured by Neuro-Insight on a worldwide basis, including television, internet, radio and out-of-home.
 

In addition, forty individual advertisements that appeared in the various mastheads were also tested.  Brand salience, which measures the degree to which a brand is thought about or noticed when a customer is in a buying situation and whether or not the ads enter the consumer’s long-term memory, found 64 different brands saw “significant” increases from pre- to post-reading.