I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
In my line of work we try to reach the right consumers with our advertising message to motivate action. One of the variables that we take into account when building a media campaign is “Duplication” – which is the degree to which individuals see your ad in more than one place. For example, of all the people who read Better Homes and Gardens magazine, 35% of them also ready Ladies Home Journal, therefore the audience between those two magazines is 35% “duplicated.”
So given that fictitious statistic, let’s pretend there are two potential advertising options for your brand (listed below as A and B). Please assume that in BOTH scenarios you will reach 80% of your target audience and 35% of your target audience will see the ad twice.
A: You should not advertise in both Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens. You should buy 2 pages in 1 of the magazines so that the 35% of your audience that sees your ad twice will see it two times in the same sitting (this will provide immediacy and repetition).
B: You should advertise in both Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens. You should buy 1 page in each magazine, because exposing 35% of your audience to your message in two separate venues provides greater benefit than exposing them to the two messages in the same magazine (I like to call this the 2+2=5 theory).
Let me know what you think!