Updated media price-performance index should please advertising clients

Since 2017, the Swiss Advertisers Association SWA and Leading Swiss Agencies LSA have been collecting and publishing the index for media contacts. Once again, with falling readership figures and unchanged gross prices, the cost per thousand (CPT) has risen for a large proportion of publications. This trend can be observed in both the 14-99 and 15-74 age target groups. The new combination "Schweiz am Wochenende", which has a low CPM of CHF 24.2, had a positive effect on the index. Due to several discontinuations of print titles, the index was adjusted accordingly this year, which still ensures comparability. The print "shopping cart" currently includes 88 newspapers and magazines in seven categories.

In TV, the index is based on the stations' planned values and not on the results actually achieved. Compared to last year, 2020 planned contact rates are down about 1 percent among 15-59 year olds and up nearly 2 percent among 15-49 year olds. Changing media behavior due to Covid-19 also had a major impact on TV usage in the spring. An effective price/performance trend can therefore only be determined on an individual basis with appropriate performance reviews. In television, the index was also expanded this year to include all language-national stations. This means that a total of 38 TV stations are now included in the comparison. Previously, 17 SRG stations and private stations from Switzerland and abroad had a market share of at least 1 percent per region.

The index for Out of Home (OOH) is down by a good 2 percent this year in the sample of around 1300 different poster sites. One reason for this is the "scrollers" included in the index, which are newly evaluated from the SPR+ research system according to actual dwell time. Since these achieve a higher output, slightly fewer posts are required for the sample posting. This pushes the index down accordingly. The price/performance trend for digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) is not yet included in this index.

The index is currently suspended for the media categories of radio and cinema. With the regular publication of the Media Price/Performance Index, the two associations make an important contribution to transparency in the media offering.