THE SCIENCE OF ADVERTISING
THE newspapers of this country can be, and are, criticised and assessed from many standpoints —that of their owners, that of their readers, and that of the firms or individuals who advertise in their pages. The commonest assessment is quantitative, based crudely on circulation totals and nothing else. Milestones like the two-million mark are reached and passed. Circulation is openly bought through free insurance schemes and elaborate canvassing cam- paigns, so that the advertising manager may be able to convince his clients that in his columns they will be proclaiming their wares to a vast and increasing audience. Obviously there is something in mere numbers. Any paper would rather have a large circulation than a small one. But as a measure either of editorial influence or of commercial value to advertisers mere numbers are the most fallacious of criteria—unless it is to be seriously argued that the influence of The Times, for example, is a tenth of that of the Daily Express. A paper's circulation must - obviously be judged qualitatively, and by no one more than the advertisers who are invited to spend money in its columns. Advertisements of £360 motor-cars in papers most of whose readers have incomes of less. than £500 are not likely to be highly productive. To the £500-and-under class, on the other hand, manufacturers of soaps or cigar- ettes, chocolates and other foodstuffs, clothing and household goods, may make a most effective appeal. Publishers obviously need to know whether a paper's readers are of the class which buys books or merely borrows them.
The difficulty hitherto has been to assess the quality of circulations accurately. Rough surmise, of ethrse, is possible, but nothing more. Data of real value have been lacking. It was to supply the data that the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers recently undertook the remarkable en- quiry whose results were published last week. By means of an elaborate investigation, involving personal interviews with representatives of over 82,000 families in all parts of Great Britain, with the exception of various thinly-populated rural areas, information' has been acquired regarding- the reading habits of the public, so far as the daily and weekly and some monthly journals are concerned, which, it is claimed with considerable justice, enables the character of the circulation of a given paper to be defined as it never has been before. No More, it may be conceded, than a broad approximation has- been • achieved, but mere guesswork has been replaced by something of the nature of scientific investigation. The result is expressed frankly in terms of incomes. Such and such a paper draws so many of its readers from the £1,000 a year class, so many from the £50041,000 class, so many from the £250-£500, so many from those below £5 a week. Circulation, in short, is weighed rather than counted, and it is weighed avowedly in terms of cash, not of intellect,—weighed, in short, with the measures that count for the advertiser. There is no disguise or concealment about that. The investigation was undertaken for a given purpose and the purpose has very largely been achieved.
Within these deliberately defined limits the results are of great interest. Some of them are what would be expected, some of them far otherwise. Among daily papers it is natural to find The Times with more £1,000 a year readers than any other, but a little surprising to find the Daily Mail second to it and the Daily Mirror as high as fourth, with the Daily Telegraph between the two. At the other end of the scale the Daily Herald and the Daily Express, with almost the same figures, are well ahead of any rival in their appeal to the £250–£125 class, and the Herald reaches almost as many £5 a week men as all its non-picture competitors put together. Though the Express is understood to have left the Mail well behind in circulation-total it is clear that the Mail has far the better circulation from the advertisers' point of view. Among London evening papers the place given to the Evening Standard is unexpected, no less than 28.6 of its circulation being in the classes over £500 a year ; only The Times and the Morning Post among dailies can show a better record. Of pairs of papers commonly compared the Sunday Times has a computed circulation (in the areas investigated) of 198,185, and the Observer of 182,275. The former has 14.9 per cent. of its circulation in the £1,000 and 34.23 per cent. in the 1500–L999 group ; the corresponding percentages for the Observer being 10.72 and 24.75. Of the two weeklies compared The Spectator draws 26.68 per cent. of its readers from the £1,000 a year class and 52.19 per cent. from the class between £500 and £999 ; for the New Statesman the figures are 10.87 and 38.47 respectively.
These statistics, valuable and unique as they are, must, it may be repeated, be used for the purpose for which they were designed and no other. The criterion may be condemned as purely sordid. It is, of course, nothing of the kind. Advertising, it is true, can be sordid, and often is. But so far as it is that it is bad advertising, and defeats its own ends. In these days, indeed, advertisement has become an art, in which only persons equipped with wide knowledge, psychological insight, some aesthetic sense and a touch of genius can achieve distinction. And even advertising of the highest order will fail in its purpose unless the advertiser desiring to reach a given public can be reasonably sure where that public is to be found. Till now that reasonable assurance has been absent. The great merit of the I.S.B.A.'s investigation is that for the first time it makes the required knowledge available. By its enterprise the society has served first its own members—which was no doubt its primary aim, and rightly so ; secondly the newspapers, for 'it is to their interest that there should appear in their columns the advertisements best calculated to appeal to their par- ticular class of readers ; and thirdly the general public, for the public will get better papers in proportion as advertisements_ are increased because advertisers are able to place their announcements more selectively and more effectively than before. Virtually all papers depend for -their existence on advertisements ; and there is nothing improper or regrettable about that • Many advertisements definitely add to a paper's attractions. Such being the ease it is matter for satisfaction that advertisers and newspapers in conjunction should have initiated and carried through with notable success a project which in many respects sets newspaper-advertising on a new basis.
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