The Publisher Research Council (PRC) gears up for a busy year

The Publisher Research Council (PRC) was created to meet the needs of fast changing reading behaviour across both traditional and digital reading platforms and to provide an innovative “Gold Standard” Reader Audience Measurement founded on global and local best practice, expertise and resources.

 The PRC is a not for profit company that represents the interests of both print and online publishers in South Africa. It conducts audience and efficacy research on behalf of members, while providing research on broader media audiences for advertisers and their agencies.

“2017 heralds a new dawn of media research in South Africa,” says Peter Langschmidt, General Manager of the PRC. “After 40 years of a single source AMPS, the industry is moving to the global model of a hub Establishment Survey (ES) with linked donor currency surveys and with the PRC being an integral spoke.”

“‘Read to Remember’, the PRC slogan, stresses our commitment to researching and better understanding of both the quality and quantity of our audiences – we will get closer to understanding how reading facilitates learning and brand recall better than any other medium.”

The PRC website – www.prc.za.com – has been designed to become the de facto resource for everything reading related, including all primary research resources, white papers, international discussions and best practice.

In keeping with the PRC ethos, projects, studies and upcoming research this year includes Media Synergy, which combines Nielsen Adex data with the GFK consumer scanner panel sales of 3000 representative South African shoppers. This clearly shows that when including print and online in a schedule the actual sales ROI per rand spent is better than TV or radio.

Other upcoming surveys for 2017 include Brand Mapp from WhyFive and Media View by TNS Kantar which will examine the inherent strengths of reading vs other media due for release in April.

Our major study for 2017, will be PAMS, a new reading currency survey in SA conducted by Nielsen, incorporating global best practice, due for release in the Sept 2017.

 

Based along the lines of similar panels like PAMCO in the UK and EMMA in Australia the PRC will begin development of their own panel in 2017. This mobile panel is envisaged to reach around 16 000 respondents in year one. Results will be calibrated and validated against the traditional PAMS face to face methodology before release.

“Publishers have accepted the need to move away from measuring exposure to paper, towards measuring platform-agnostic reading behaviour which can be seen in the ES and PAMS reading questions,” says Langschmidt. “Most of our research will closely follow the release of the two waves of the ES 2017.”

“We will ensure the most complete measurement of reader audiences, across all platforms, to inform effective advertising investment, unlike in the past, when reader research provided advertisers with only the numbers. In 2017 the PRC will be releasing six different studies that provide the audience numbers; but in addition, many other measures like perception, trust, multiple exposures, brand awareness and recall, and actual ROI per rand spent.”

If advertising return is important to you, just like offers to purchase, contracts, exams, certificates and bank statements, and if you want your target market to notice and respond to your campaign, put it in writing.

For additional information and reading research visit www.prc.za.com.