Monitor Glasses, Wristwatch Gauge Print Ads’ Readership

Even in print, technology is seeking new answers to age-old advertising and marketing questions.

Two New Jersey companies--Pretesting Co. in Englewood and Perception Research Service Inc. of Englewood Cliffs--are trying to interest publishers in products such as glasses that track reader eye movement and digital watches that could secretly record what magazine a test subject is reading by picking up signals from a microchip placed inside a postcard insert.

Lee S. Weinblatt, president of Pretesting, said that it would be up to a test administrator or a magazine whether to supply these watches to unsuspecting participants or to inform them of the watch’s true purpose.

“It’s true, it could be abused,” Weinblatt said, “but so could any other technology.”

In many ways, however, publishers have been far ahead of their broadcasting brethren in knowing about their audience.

By comparing their subscriber lists to geographic data bases, for example, magazines and newspapers have been able to identify where their readers live, how many people are in the household and even how much money the subscriber makes.

Yet there remain some unknowns about print advertising.

For instance, magazines have long demanded and received premiums from advertisers who wanted an ad placed on the inside or back cover, because it was thought that those locations had the biggest impact on readers. Yet many advertisers who bought the premium space never knew if it was worth the higher rate.

Using the special glasses that can electronically track where the reader’s eyes are focusing, Pretesting found that magazines and newspapers are not read front to back, like books.

“Most people scan a magazine for an interesting article or a picture,” Weinblatt said. “We found that having three ads in a row on the right-hand side of the page had a more powerful impact than the inside front cover or even a six-page (advertising) insert.”