ViewPoint
November 2009

Verified Would Like to Welcome...

On the Go Magazine
4 Front Media
Pickering, ON
On the Go Magazine is a free commuter publication for the Greater Toronto Area. On the Go Magazine is a quarterly magazine with a wide variety of features contained within each issue on the topics of entertainment, home, restaurants, business and careers, food and recipes, travel, and much more. The magazine is distributed at Gateway newsstands throughout the GO Train stations and the TTC Underground network.

Railway Age
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp.
New York, NY
Railway Age is a leading railway and transit magazine, reporting on the latest news and technological developments in the railway industry.

International Railway Journal
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp.
New York, NY
International Railway Journal is the first freight, passenger, and urban rail journal. It is distributed to every country known to operate a railway or rapid transit system.

Salina Journal
Harris Enterprise, Inc.
Salina, KS
The Salina Journal is a daily newspaper serving Salina County and most of North Central Kansas. The Salina Journal is the leading local source for news and information including local news, sports, features, weather, and much more.

Verified Becomes a Member of the IAB

Verified recently became an associate member of the Interactive Audit Bureau (IAB). The IAB is comprised of leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the U.S. The goal of the IAB is to grow the interactive advertising marketplace, increase interactive's share of total market spend, and increase their members' share of total marketing spend. Five key components of the IAB are measurement, research, training, policy, and supply chain.

As a leading auditing firm, Verified's interest in the measurement arm of the IAB's mission are keen. Developing objective audience measurement principles and generally accepted auditing practices are essential for the publishing community. Verified's commitment to "leveling the playing field" is key to successfully auditing interactive and building the confidence in interactive advertising that media planners and buyers need.

"Verified is happy to have the IAB's recognition as an independent source for media auditing," said Tim Prouty, Verified's Chief Executive Officer. "We expect to be contributing on a committee level to help further the understanding of the role integrated media plays in all publishing. Our intention is to take what we learn as IAB members and use it to help our clients successfully adopt interactive models in their business that allow full monetization of content."

Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a public policy office in Washington, DC. The IAB's councils, committees, and working groups allow industry leaders the opportunity to work together to improve interactive advertising and the marketing industry.

Perishables Sales Booming at Retail

After a year of steadily shaking up consumer habits in the supermarket, the recession has produced some clear winners—and new research from Nielsen shows that most of them are on the edges of your local grocery store.

Stores' perishable departments—the bakery, fresh meat, deli, and produce that line the perimeter—are becoming more productive as consumers become used to eating out less and focus more intently on the quality of the meals they prepare at home, says Jeff Gregori, VP of Nielsen's solution consulting, based in New Jersey.

With 46% of consumers saying that their families eat out less often, value-priced meals at retail are posting double-digit increases, he reports. "This 'return to the home' has been a common theme, and we've heard it a lot in the last year. But with this research, what really surprised us was the movement of foods sold on the perimeter."

Among the many consumers who have cut down on dining out, there's been a much greater awareness of what's for dinner, he says. "They are spending about 6% more in supermarkets and supercenters as a result, Food Network viewership is going through the roof, and online food research is up dramatically." Smart retailers are taking advantage of this new what-to-serve anxiety, with chains like Meijer and Whole Foods Market offering food-planning content through iPhones.

But just because these shoppers are willing to pay extra for foods that are more convenient doesn't mean they aren't focused on getting them at a good price: Nielsen finds that 51% of meat and seafood is purchased when it's on sale, and 41% of shoppers notice those prices in store circulars. And while supercenters and warehouse clubs have made a concerted effort to beef up their perishables, supermarkets are still stronger, with a 70% market share of meat and seafood, and 50% of deli business.

Separately, Whole Foods released its fiscal fourth-quarter results, which exceeded many analysts' expectations. Comparable-store sales fell just 0.9% for the quarter compared to the same period a year ago, and sales for the quarter were actually up.

"We believe our sales have stabilized and officially turned the corner," the Austin, Texas-based company reported in its earnings release. "Our comparable store and identical store sales trends improved for the second quarter in a row and, after five quarters of year-over-year declines, so far in the first quarter are up 1.6% and 0.4%, respectively."

© 2009 MediaPost Communications

Paper Trail: The Week Guarantees Ad Recall

Making a classic ad pitch to advertisers themselves, The Week magazine is guaranteeing a high degree of recall for ads in its pages—and will run free ads if it fails to meet certain goals.

The magazine's publishers hope this tried-and-true approach will further distinguish it from rivals, according to the New York Times, building on its recent success as measured by circulation and audience figures.

The basic premise underlying the pitch is that The Week—a weekly digest of important news from a number of sources here and abroad—is qualitatively superior to other magazines in terms of ad recall, given its high reader engagement.

The pitch: the same ad will perform better in The Week than in other magazines, in all issues, regardless of subject matter or headlines. Specifically, the publishers are promising ad recall in the top third of magazines.

The Week is backing up this guarantee with data from Affinity's Vista research service, which tracks readers' exposure and reaction to print advertising. If reader recall for a particular ad in the magazine fails to place in the top third of titles measured by Affinity, The Week will give advertisers free ad pages until it reaches that goal. The offer is open to advertisers that buy at least 12 ad pages in the magazine per year.

The Week is one of the few weekly titles (and consumer magazines in general) to report strong growth in ad pages during one of the worst economic downturns in memory.

According to the Media Industry Newsletter (MIN), for the year-to-date through November 9, The Week's ad pages are up 14.6% to 535. That makes it one of just three weekly titles measured by MIN to see any kind of increase for the year-to-date in 2009, out of a total 33.

© 2009 MediaPost Communications

Events Calendar

CRMA Publisher's Winter Roundtable
January 7 – 9, 2010
Miami Beach, FL
www.citymag.org

IDEAlliance Spectrum360
January 18 – 20, 2010
Naples, FL
www.foliomag.com/2010/idealliance-spectrum360

WIPP's Women's Leadership Conference
January 29, 2010
San Francisco, CA
www.wipp.net

AABP Winter Conference
January 29, 2010
New Orleans, LA
www.bizpubs.org

If you have an event that you would like to announce, please send your information
to e-newsletter@verifiedaudit.com.

Tips & Techniques: Online Audience Measurement

Audience activity consists of counts of Internet users accessing content through an Internet application (browser or browser-equivalent), to remove nonhuman activity.

In order to accurately measure online audience, filtration procedures are needed to ensure that nonhuman activities, such as Internet robots or spiders, are excluded from the measurement counts.

Caching must also be appropriately accounted for and should be excluded. Additionally, internal traffic must be eliminated from the counts.

Hierarchy of Audience Measurement:

• Unique Users and Unique Visitors – A count of people who have visited the Internet content during a set measurement period.
• Unique Device – A count of unique browsers after multiple browser usage on an individual computer is accounted for.
• Unique Browser – A count of unique cookies after corrections have been made for cookie deletion.
• Unique Cookie – A count of unduplicated cookies that represents Internet activity or visits to content during a measurement period.

Online traffic measurement can be census-based or panel-based. Server-based audience measurement is the direct result of analysis of a publisher's website log files. Panel- or survey-based measurement is conducted by polling a preselected group for information on their Internet and specific website usage. The results are then used to predict the usage of a larger audience. Server-based and panel-based measurement figures can be different.

For publishers, online audience measurement can provide the information needed to ask for maximum ad pricing and prove the relevancy of a website to advertisers and media buyers.

Please send comments and story ideas to e-newsletter@verifiedaudit.com or contact us at:

Verified Audit Circulation
900 Larkspur Landing Circle, Suite 295
Larkspur, CA 94939-1758
415.461.6006
415.461.6007 fax