Needham Fatica Blog

The Poynter Institute has a long tradition of doing ground-breaking research. The latest is Eyetrack07, the fourth of their eyetracking projects over the past 16 years. They went to four cities (Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and St. Petersburg) to look at the patterns of reading in broadsheet, tabloid, and on- screen publications.

When it comes to advertising, the study dropped a mini-bombshell on the conventional wisdom: With broadsheet ads, bigger might not always be better. As powerful as full-page ads are in broadsheet, an ad between half a page and a full page in size is equally, if not more, powerful.

"There are commercial implications in this," said Paul Tash, editor and CEO of The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. The finding suggests taking a second look at the practice of charging more for full-page ads. Similarly, the study showed that readers pay twice as much attention to color ads as they do to black and white ones, but the premium for color is not nearly double.



The Study:

The Study by the Society of Newspaper Editors, focused on a comparison of print and online news reading -- looking for similarities and differences in reading behavior. They tested nearly 600 regular readers in four U.S. markets, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and the Philadelphia Daily News. Test subjects were asked to read that day's edition in either print or online. Tests were conducted late last year and encompassed thirty days of publication. The newspapers recruited 100 readers for each of the six test sites by calling subscriber lists, contacting the general population and by running ads in their publications. Here's what the readers looked like:

Subjects were broken into two age groups:
56 percent of the sample were age 18 to 41
44 percent were 42-65
The average age was 39.

There were equal numbers of men and women:
49 percent men
51 percent women
They also looked at the number of times they read the paper or news Web site each week:
29 percent read print or online one to three times per week.
The rest of the sample -- a big 71 percent -- read print or online four or more times a week.
Although education and employment were not recruiting criteria for the subjects, the sample was well-educated and made good incomes:
87 percent had some college. And online subjects had the highest education level.
75 percent were employed.
Subjects read the paper for a total of 15 minutes while they wore eye tracking glasses that recorded their gaze. Not the most normal of situations -- certainly not the same as if they were sitting at their kitchen table -- but subjects reported that the experience was comfortable and they were able to read as they would normally."

Related Links:

http://www.needhamfatica.com

http://eyetrack.poynter.org/

http://www.poynter.org/