Reading and Noting

Daniel Starch's "Reading and Noting" methodology came to the UK in the 1940’s. Since then it has become an accepted standard ‘post-test’ of editorial and advertising awareness.

It is a quantitative research approach conducted with readers of a specific print title. Traditionally, hall-test methodologies have been used, which require large budgets to build adequate sample sizes. Other lines of enquiry was therefore tasked with bringing the methodology up-to-date.

Plan

We created a unique, Flash based, online version of the test that produces significant cost savings over traditional methods (no interviewers, postage, or equipment hire). It's designed to measure two main elements:

• Editorial recall of articles and sections
• Effectiveness of advertisements

Results

Readers of the Metro title were recruited and shown a virtual version of the newspaper they had read. By interacting with our Flash survey technology they were able to recall their experience with different elements of the paper.

We were therefore able to measure editorial performance - which sections of the title are read and enjoyed the most/least? This helped us to understand the readership makeup of the entire product, the success of editorial sections, and to steer content development.

Our tool also allowed us to measure advertising performance - what proportion of readers paid attention to individual adverts? We could then build up average impact figures for various advert types, e.g. size of ad, position, page orientation, colour, etc. This was used to understand the effectiveness of advertising at an individual advertiser/brand level, and to aid ad sales development by identifying premium ad sites, sizes, etc.