Edward Malthouse Medill School of Journalism, United States Bobby J.

Calder Kellogg School of Management and Medill School of Journalism, United States

The effectiveness of an advertisement depends on the brand being advertised, the quality of the ad itself, and characteristics of the execution such as the size of the ad and location in the medium (e.g., back cover, inner front cover, etc.). An additional factor, which has recently been receiving substantial attention in the advertising community, is reader/viewer involvement, sometimes called engagement, with the media vehicle itself (MI4 study). Several studies have shown that reader involvement with the editorial content in a magazine can affect reactions to an ad. For example, Calder and Malthouse (2004) and Malthouse et al (2007) showed that the extent to which readers find the editorial content of a magazine high-quality and sophisticated predicts copy testing measures of an ad, after controlling for other possible causal factors. Likewise, readers who feel the magazine improves them and gets them to try new things (hereafter called the utilitarian experience) rate ads higher. Readers' involvement with editorial content can extend to ads. The implications of these findings for media planning are potentially profound because the media selection and price of most advertising is currently determined by audience size and execution factors such as position and size, without consideration of reader involvement in any formal way. Consider an example where two magazines have the same rate base and charge the same amount for some ad, but one magazine is more involving, e.g., its readers find the editorial content more relaxing or utilitarian. The above research suggests that an ad appearing in the involving magazine will be more effective than the same ad appearing in the other magazine. These findings indicate that there are synergistic effects between involvement with the advertising vehicle and reactions to the advertised product. This implies that an advertiser should attempt to select media vehicles that have higher levels of involvement. Beyond this, the advertiser may wish to select vehicles that are high on certain kinds of involvement that are congruent with the product being advertised, such as the utilitarian experience noted above. It would therefore by useful to know how different types of media compare in terms of overall involvement and specific kinds of involvement. The question is not only one of how different types of media compare, but how big these differences are relative to differences between different vehicles within a medium.

This paper thus addresses the perennial big question about media, Which medium is most involving (at least among online, magazines, and print)? But it frames this question in a more meaningful way by recognizing that involvement is a multidimensional construct and that some media may be higher on one dimension and lower on another. Furthermore, it recognizes that the variance within the medium needs to be considered in comparing involvement and specific types of involvement (experiences) across media. Before addressing the media comparison question we first provide some relevant background information about our approach to involvement and the methodology behind the data we will use for our comparisons. DEFINING AND MEASURING INVOLVEMENT There is disagreement over what involvement with editorial is and how to measure it. The first contribution of this article is to define involvement and contrast our definition with others. Our definition of involvement derives from previous work on consumer experiences with the editorial content of magazines (Malthouse, Calder and Eadie 2003; Malthouse, Calder and Tamhane 2007), web sites (Calder and Malthouse 2005), and newspapers (Calder and Malthouse 2004). The focus of this previous research has been on conceptualizing and measuring a comprehensive set of experiences with a specific medium. The output has been validated measurement scales for many experiences, including 44 for newspapers, 39 for magazines and 22 for the web. The present study extends this previous work in several ways. First, in an attempt to be comprehensive, the previous research identified so many experiences that they cannot all be measured in a cost-effective way for a large number of publications. If the goal is to compare experiences across publications and/or media, a smaller set of experiences with fewer items must be identified. Second, the previous research has focused on experiences with a specific medium (magazines, newspapers, or web). While many of the experiences turn out to be similar, the scales were not designed for making comparisons across media. We attempt to find a subset of experiences and items to enable crossmedia comparisons, while also capturing characteristics unique to a medium. Third, for some applications the experience measures are too granular. What is needed is an overall measure of involvement with a publication across individual experiences. Different publications may be involving by providing different experiences. The experience measures describe specifically why a consumer would want to view or read something, and involvement is meant to measure an overall level of engagement. A goal of this research is to address these issues and validate the previous scales using independent data sets and different datacollection methods. In total, we propose a system of measures for involvement that apply across media. Before defining involvement, we must first discuss reader / viewer / user experiences with media content. Experiences with a publication are the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that people have about the publication. We now give some

examples of experiences to make the concept clearer. The utilitarian experience mentioned in the introduction is an example. Readers who have the intrinsic experience think of the publication as a treat or a reward. Reading is a quiet way to relax and take a break from everything else that is happening in one's life. Reading is my time alone. It's an escape that takes my mind off other things. Another experience with media is social. People believe that reading certain magazines, newspapers or web sites makes them more interesting in that they can better talk to others, and to themselves, about things they read in the news that are relevant to their life. The following statements, taken from qualitative interviews, are indicative of this social experience: A big reason I read it is to make myself more interesting to other people, I bring up things I've read in this magazine in conversations with many other people, I use things from this site in discussions or arguments with people I know, and I show things in the newspaper to people in my family. In qualitative interviews about media web sites, newspaper and magazines, readers mention the utilitarian, intrinsic and social experiences. These seem to be common across media, although the specific language people use about these experiences varies somewhat across media. For example, some statements about the utilitarian experience with newspapers have a more local character such as I learn about things to do or places to go, while some for magazines focus more on learning to do things the right way, something one would expect to find, for example, with service magazines. Abstracting from these differences, both statements are about how a media product is important in people's lives in terms of useful advice and tips. Other experiences are more specific to a particular medium. For example, people describe a civic experience with newspapers, but not so much with magazines or web sites. They say things such as reading this newspaper makes me a better citizen, our society would be much weaker without newspapers or reading this newspaper makes me feel part of my community. People mention social networking experiences about online media, such as how they enjoy reading or viewing content created by other users, as opposed to content created by employees of the site, and how they socialize with other users through the side. Our previous research has identified many such experiences with different media. We define reader/user/viewer involvement as the collective qualitative experiences with content. Publications can involve or engage their readers in many different ways. Some magazines deliver high levels of the utilitarian experience, while other successful magazines may focus on providing intrinsic experiences. The two experiences are not mutually exclusive, and some publications could deliver both. Likewise there are differences across readers with some readers involved because of the intrinsic experience and others seeking more civic experiences. Our point is that there are many paths to involvement. Experiences characterize specific ways of being involved and the aggregate collection of experiences constitutes involvement or engagement.

Involvement with editorial content has been discussed in the advertising community for many years and our formulation of the concept is somewhat different from others. We highlight some important differences. Others have characterized involvement in ways that we regard as consequences of involvement. Marc (1966) defines involvement as how disappointed someone would be if a magazine were no longer published. Syndicated market research often asks whether a publication is one of my favorites, whether a respondent would recommend it to a friend or is attentive. Others equate involvement with behavioral usage, e.g., involved users of a web site are those who visit the site often and/or spend substantial time reading the articles. While all of these outcomes are important, we argue that they are consequences of involvement rather than involvement itself. It is involvement with a publication that causes someone to want to read it, be attentive, recommend it to a friend, and be disappointed if it were no longer published. Likewise, a lack of involvement will likely cause these outcomes not to occur. Our conceptualization is thus more fundamental than these other approaches. As illustrated in Figure 1, these outcomes are potential consequences of involvement, but not involvement itself. The ARF's MI4 committee has proposed a working definition of engagement, a concept which is closely related to involvement: Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context. Our definition of involvement is somewhat more general in that it is not restricted to experiences that affect reactions to advertising. We recommend first understanding all of the ways that the surrounding editorial context fits within a reader's life because this broader focus could reveal experiences that have not yet been leveraged by advertisers, but potentially could be in the future. Our experiences supplement the ARF definition by expounding on what the surrounding context means to the reader.

Newspapers aim to innovate

PARIS: New product development and enhanced branding are among the strategies newspaper publishers will employ to drive growth, a study has found. The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers partnered with the Norwegian School of Management and University of Central Lancashire to survey 500 relevant media owners in 100 countries, finding that 18.5% of participants' revenues had fallen by at least 21% over the last corporate financial year. More than 25% noted a decline in the 11% to 20% range, and almost a third pegged the scale of this contraction at between 1% and 10%. Around 80% of respondents had lost around 1% to 20% of print advertising income, but 50% reported increased online

ad sales, measured against less than a quarter witnessing a drop off. While the panel represented publications varying in size and reach, new product development was considered the primary goal for a majority of the sample. Acquiring additional revenues from external sources was another leading aim, and 19% of those polled must boost their takings by between 11% and 20% to meet overall objectives. This constituted a 4% expansion on the number of organisations which supported such a statement in a similar study last year. Another 27% of contributors intended to augment returns delivered via "non-traditional" sources by a margin in the 21% to 30% area in the next five years, a 1.3% uptick from 2009. Over 67% of interviewees hoped to roll out fresh products or services during the coming 12 months, and half wished to streamline workflows and processes, improving efficiency as a result. Indeed, 60% of executives suggested introducing digital offerings had the greatest potential to save money and strengthen performance going forward. Marketing and branding, more in-depth audience research and better customer relationship management were other tactics attracting interest. Redundancies ranked comparatively low on the list, in favour of cost reductions covering materials, printing and distribution the main priorities instead. Martha Stone, director of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project - led by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers - argued the industry was quickly adapting to the digital age. "The media ecosystem is changing rapidly, and newspapers and their ancillary businesses are developing new businesses to meet the challenges," she said. "Our survey documents the reality publishers see in the diminishing print advertising business, but are bullish about building new businesses to replace all or some of that revenue." Data sourced from WAN-IFRA; additional content by Warc staff, 7 December 2010