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Case Studies

St. Petersburg Times Uses ABC’s Insert Verification Service (IVS) to Demonstrate Value to Advertisers

Situation

The St. Petersburg Times has served the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg/Clearwater area for 122 years. St. Petersburg is the second largest city in the state of Florida by population according to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, with nearly 2.8 million residents and an additional 250,000 seasonal residents.

Issue

The St. Petersburg Times wanted a way to demonstrate to advertisers its effectiveness in packaging and distribution of its FSIs. They knew it was the area’s best distribution vehicle for preprints and wanted to provide additional assurance to its advertisers.



Solution

Already audited by ABC for its circulation and readership, the St. Petersburg Times adopted the IVS audit to confirm the effectiveness of its preprint programs.

Results

Buyers prefer doing business with newspapers who participate in IVS. Being involved in IVS differentiates the St. Petersburg Times from other newspapers and its IVS results provide their sales team with a great story to tell its advertisers.

Understanding that buyers like Target, Walgreen’s, Macy’s, J.C. Penney and others now have an increasing array of advertising methods, the St. Petersburg Times wanted to provide assurance that it was the right choice for their advertising investments.

According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), preprinted FSIs account for the majority of newspaper advertising expenditures. The most recent NAA estimations indicate that newspapers distribute more than 87 billion inserts annually.

“We knew we had an efficient preprint packaging and distribution process,” said Jerry Hill, director of circulation, St. Petersburg Times. “But saying that we are effective at preprint delivery is one thing; proving it is another. We wanted to prove to our advertisers that our newspaper is the best investment they could make in terms of an advertising choice. When we learned that ABC was developing a credible way to measure that through its Insert Verification Service, we were one of the first to sign up for the program.”

ABC’s IVS program is a quantitative review and audit of a newspaper’s advertising insert distribution process on a given test date. Each report shows a “total insert proficiency” calculation that reflects the newspaper’s insert distribution performance. This is represented as an overall success percentage indicating the volume of inserts reaching intended newspaper recipients. The balance of the IVS report offers additional details on the verification field test and discloses error rates and conditions observed by ABC. To date, more than 50 newspapers have scheduled or completed their IVS audits.

With a total insert proficiency of 99.75 percent represented on its Sunday, September 25, 2005, IVS report, the St. Petersburg Times is proud of its achievement.

“Our IVS results are a highlight in our sales presentations and it’s something that we’re really proud of,” says Hill. “Our operations, packaging center, process improvement and distribution teams do a great job on a ongoing basis and they were able to show that in our resulting IVS report. Plus, ABC’s professionalism during the review was outstanding. They did a thorough job and performed the audit in a timely fashion.”

“The best part of it is that advertisers and buyers have recognized us in our efforts,” continued Hill. “Some are starting to identify and prefer newspapers that participate in IVS. They want to invest wisely and our IVS results assure them that they made the right choice in the St. Petersburg Times.”

Hill concludes, “It will take some time and effort, but newspapers need to embrace this audit as proof to advertisers that we will continue to be their number one pre-print advertising distribution vehicle.”

Here are some tips on having a smooth IVS audit from Jerry Hill, director of circulation, St. Petersburg Times:

  • Walk through the entire process with your internal audit team early on (review your production, packaging and circulation processes)
  • Assign a single point of contact for preparation and management
  • Create a plan of action for the audit
    • Assign appropriate staff
    • Design achievable auditor routes
    • Provide proper materials for packaging and labeling selected papers
    • Over-communicate the whole process to field managers, transportation, etc.
  • Have individuals knowledgeable of the operation available during counting
  • Be flexible about last-minute changes
  • Run things by the ABC audit manager when they happen to avoid error disputes after the fact (out of spec inserts, etc.)
  • Know your systems and their reporting limitations
  • Talk to other papers that have already been audited (are there other efficiencies you can implement in your process?)

For more information on IVS, contact ABC’s manager, sales and marketing at (847) 879-8412.