That need for advertising accountability resulted in magazine publisher Meredith Corp. launching its Engagement Dividend 
program, which guarantees that the advertisements in its print
magazines will boost the advertiser’s sales. The program will compare
the buying behavior of a group of panelists who read the magazines with a
complementary group that didn’t to prove that sales increased as a
result of the ads. Kimberly-Clark Corp. said this week that it will be
the first “premier advertising partner.”

Meanwhile, Affinity,
a marketing and media research company specializing in advertising
effectiveness and audience measurement, has been polling reader response
to print and digital ads and comparing the effectiveness of tablet
advertising vs. print.

"We’ve measured close to 4,000 digital ads, so we’re at the point
where we’re beginning to develop a normative database: what is the
average recall score or action score. We can put them side by side with
our print numbers," said Tom Robinson, managing director at Affinity.

The company concluded that compared head to head, the net action
scores, which measure effectiveness in terms of response to the ad, are
much higher in iPad magazines than in the printed versions.

Tablet ads outpacing traditional print versions

"The ads that appear in iPads and digital tablets seem to be
outpacing and outperforming the traditional printed versions of the
ads," said Robinson. "The recall is higher but the action scores–to
make a purchase, go to a link, click to download an app–are much higher
due to the interactivity of the tablet environment," he said. "Digital
obviously offers more opportunities to respond with the interactivity,
the links built in, the videos, and that is directly reflected in the
fact that we’re getting higher reader ad effectiveness scores on the
digital side," Robinson said.

Affinity also tracks the performance of different types of ads. "It
always comes back to the creative," Robinson said. "Ads with 360-degree
views (where the reader rotates the tablet to get different views of a
car, for example) seem to be pacing at a higher rate of recall for all
digital ads, which is also outpacing all print ads. Videos and photo
galleries also do well on the action questions we ask," he said.

"The question is, is this a honeymoon effect or is this a trend over
time. As tablets become mainstream, will those recall and action scores
continue to skew higher?" he said.

Tablets are still far from mainstream, but their influence is growing quickly. Affinity’s Fall American Magazine Study
reported that the number of Americans accessing magazine-branded
content and advertising through smartphones, ereaders, tablets and other
mobile devices was up 6.2% from the spring report, to 35 million
consumers. Robinson said tablets account for most of that growth.