Australian Doctor narrowly beats Australian Family Physician as most-read among GPs
Australian Family Physician grew its average issue readership (AIR) among GPs to 71.6% up from 69.5% in 2016, narrowly losing out on the top spot to Australian Doctor in a survey carried out by Competitive Advantage Research.
The survey, commissioned annually by Medical Publishers of Australia, quizzed 854 GPs about their reading habits.
With just a 0.1 point difference between the two titles, Australian Doctor achieved a 71.7% AIR, just 0.1 points up from the previous year.
Medicine Today fell 1.0 points to 69%, after last year’s strong rise of 4.7% could not be replicated.
Elsewhere, Medical Observer achieved 63.0%, Medical Republic 52.2% and Medical Journal of Australia 25.3%.
“With no significant change overall in the reported levels of print readership in 2017 as compared with last year, GP use of print media remains as extensive as it has always been in this category,” said Ashley Sparkes, principal of Competitive Advantage Research.
“As shown through extended research of multiple media channels this year, including digital, print isn’t the whole story anymore, but it’s just as big a story as ever. That’s in contrast with reported visits by pharmaceutical reps, which have declined by 24% over the past six years.”
Source: Competitive Advantage Research for Medical Publishers of Australia
Are all of these 5 titles alike in terms of similar editorial and pumped full of ad’s from big pharma and medical device / equipment companies. (Poss a few Lexi or Merc ad’s etc…)?
OR
Are some of these designed with real qualiuty editorial and minimum ad’s?
Which ones are better regarded by GP’s?
Readership isnt everything. I might want my brand in the quality issue over the most delivered…
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@apples and oranges
Excellent question
Answer:
a) No, they are not alike. Two are journal-like in that they publish mostly peer reviewed clinical reviews – Medicine Today and Australian Family Physician (the apples) and two are tabloid newspapers – Australian Doctor and The Medical Republic (the oranges), with very different approaches to editorial. The last one – Medical Observer – is actually an ‘inserted’ magazine into Australia Doctor and it is arguable that it should not be included in this research at all – Im calling it the ‘fake pear’. If you are inserted into a newspaper, is your readership really your readership or that of your parent? If you advertise in the parent and the insert, you don’t get double the impact, that is for sure.
But I would say that as Im a competitor to both the newspaper and the insert. My understanding though is lots of marketers get that point as well.
b) All the publications – even the ‘fake pear’ – are relatively high quality, AND they all make their money via advertising, much of which is from pharmaceutical companies.
BTW: unlike readership in consumer research, this readership is supposed to be a quality measure NOT so much a reach measure. All the publications largely get sent free to exactly the same circulation. Readership in this research is a measure of how many doctors actually picked up and read the publication they got sent = average issue readership.
Jeremy (Publisher – The Medical Republic)