Case Studies
Taste of Home Uses ABC Audit to Attract Advertiser Attention
in Competitive Food-Magazine Market
Situation
Launched in 1993, Taste of Home differentiates itself from other food magazines by drawing from readers and field editors to supply its content. Each recipe features real food from real home cooks and includes a color photo. Building on its successful user-generated content model, the Taste of Home brand now spans four magazines, a national cooking school and a Web site.
Issue
In 2007, Taste of Home began accepting advertising for the first time since its inception. New to advertising sales, Taste of Home needed a way to establish itself with potential advertisers among the wide-variety of food magazines.
Solution
Once the Taste of Home staff made the decision to sell advertising, they realized the importance of securing an ABC audit and immediately applied for ABC membership. In addition to the flagship magazine, plans are underway to audit the other titles in the Taste of Home library, including Taste of Home Healthy Cooking.
Results
With a rate base of 3.1 million, Taste of Home was able to independently verify its position as the largest food magazine and one of the largest consumer magazines in the country and begin building awareness within the advertising community.
After more than 10 years of publishing Taste of Home without advertising content, the publishing staff knew that its initial foray into the advertising community had to be successful. In addition to great content and a devoted audience, a key element of the launch plan was arming the Taste of Home ad sales staff with an ABC audit.
“Most agencies look to the ABC audit as a measure for recommending a publication to their client,” explained Lora Gier, vice president, integrated partnerships, Taste of Home. “In the ever-evolving, increasingly crowded media arena, circulation engagement and reach are such important criteria for an advertiser’s decision process. ABC provides a trusted base point to help make those decisions and ideally increases your chance of standing out from the competition and positioning your brand uniquely in the marketplace.”
Jim Woods, vice president of planning, consumer marketing at Taste of Home agrees, “With a brand this expansive, it was important to us to present credible, verified circulation evidence to advertisers and ABC is the ‘gold standard’ of media audits.”
With the release of the initial audit, the ad sales staff immediately went to work touting Taste of Home’s rate base of more than 3.1 million copies. The ABC reports and data were incorporated in press releases, ad sales presentations and client mailings.
“With a brand this expansive, it was important to us to present credible, verified circulation evidence to advertisers and ABC is the ‘gold standard’ of media audits.”
Jim Woods, vice president of planning, consumer marketing, Taste of Home
Taste of Home also plans to take advantage of other ABC tools such as Rapid Report to keep its advertisers apprised of their circulation.
“We look forward to continuing our editorial and circulation efforts to make Taste of Home America’s largest and best-loved cooking magazines,” said Woods. “Utilizing ABC Rapid Report will help us communicate with advertisers and keep them up to date on our circulation story.”
In addition to the release of its initial audit, Taste of Home also reported in the December 2007 FAS-FAX for the first time where they ranked among the top 25 consumer magazines in terms of total paid and verified circulation.
For more information about ABC membership, contact a member of the marketing and sales department at (847) 605-0909 or visit ABC’s Web site at www.accessabc.com.