Affinity Launches VISTA Digital

NEW YORK, Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- With publishers under increased pressure to document the effectiveness of their cross-platform advertising packages, Affinity announced today that VISTA – the industry's leading syndicated magazine effectiveness tracking service – is now measuring the effectiveness of digital ads that are delivered to consumers through electronic magazine subscriptions and magazine apps designed for iPads and other mobile devices.

VISTA Digital effectiveness scores are now available to advertisers, agencies and publishers on a syndicated basis.  Starcom, MediaVest and Initiative are the first media planning agencies to subscribe to the enhanced VISTA Service to evaluate the impact of their clients' digital magazine campaigns.  These charter agency subscribers represent more than half of all spending by the top 10 magazine advertisers.

According to Robin Steinberg, Senior Vice President, Print Investment and Activation Director at MediaVest USA, "The expansion of the VISTA Service will now enable us to quantify the effectiveness of our clients' magazine content campaigns in both print and digital form.  This comparison is important for us to make in order to evaluate ALL digital marketing opportunities that have become a critical component of publishers' proposals."

Adds Carolyn Dubi, Senior Vice President and Director Print at Initiative, "Our agency is driven by a performance led ideal, therefore it's imperative for us to understand how these platforms impact the business goals of our clients.  We're excited to partner with Affinity to help us reach these accountability expectations, particularly as digital delivery of content begins to play a more prominent role in the future of magazines."

Like the core VISTA Service, VISTA Digital measures the recall and brand association of issue-specific ads, as well as the actions that readers take as a result of exposure to a campaign.  For the digital magazine ads that Affinity is now measuring, the reader action questions have been customized to reflect the interactivity of the digital platforms that many publishers are employing to extend the reach of their brands.  A battery of engagement questions that focus on consumers' experiences with the digital editions of individual magazine brands is also included in the syndicated measurement.

According to Brenda White, Starcom USA's Senior Vice President and Publishing Activation Director, "Starcom is dedicated to creating publishing brand experiences that provide new opportunities for a generation of readers who are choosing from a wide array of digital publishing technologies.  With the expansion of Affinity's VISTA Service, we now have access to new data and intelligence to gauge the effectiveness of mobile advertising opportunities for our own brands, as well as across the entire competitive landscape."

The VISTA Digital Service reflects Affinity's ongoing commitment to develop innovative methodologies designed to keep pace with the evolving magazine marketplace.  In addition to the new VISTA capabilities, Affinity's American Magazine Study will begin reporting the total reach of magazine brands this Spring, which will include unduplicated audience estimates for a magazine's print and digital properties.

About Affinity LLC  Affinity is a media research firm specializing in magazine audience measurement and accountability tracking.  Affinity's products include ProofReader (campaign pre-testing), The American Magazine Study (print and digital magazine audience measurement), the VISTA Service (in-market effectiveness of print and digital magazine ads) and MagPlan (the industry's first accountability-driven magazine optimizer).

Company Web site www.AffinityResearch.net

Contact Tom Robinson, Affinity, 212-922-9582 ext. 201, [email protected]

SOURCE Affinity LLC