Florida Trend and Wine Enthusiast were the first magazines in the nation to submit their subscriber studies to BPA International for auditing. BPA (Business of Performing Audits) began offering its new Subscriber Study Audit Service in 2003, and we were eager to offer our study to its scrutiny. BPA has the largest membership of any media-auditing organization and has been auditing our circulation numbers since 1987.
You will be interested to know that the audited numbers from this most recent subscriber study are very similar to numbers we've reported in past years, confirming that we've been doing our research the right way. And while this is good news to us, it is very good news for Florida Trend advertisers, according to Glenn Hansen, BPA president and CEO.
"In today's complex media-buying environment, credible publisher-commissioned subscriber research can offer advertisers additional insights for their investment decisions," Hansen says. "When a publisher submits its research firm's methodology to independent, third-party verification by BPA, advertisers have concrete assurance that the results were gathered under the print media guidelines developed by the advertising industry's own experts."
We know that media buyers for our national advertisers, as well as very sophisticated agencies and clients here in Florida, will be impressed by BPA's affirmation that we conducted our subscriber survey properly and ethically. I predict that soon every advertiser and ad agency will require all publishers they deal with to provide an independent audit of subscriber studies.
Here's just a sampling of what we learned about our subscribers' reading habits, personal and professional activities and demographics from the survey conducted by New York-based Clear Research and Walker Communications in August 2003:
Each copy of Florida Trend is read by an average of 2.8 readers. With our current audited circulation at 55,000, the average number of readers per issue is 154,000.
Median age: 49.5.
37% are millionaires.
97% are top executives, managers, professionals, business owners or managers.
Average household income: $210,500.
Average net worth: $1.9 million.
Average value of primary residence: $488,800.
48% own real estate in addition to their primary residence.
One in four plans to move to another residence in the next one to three years.
In the next 24 months, one-third of the companies represented in the survey plan to expand their Florida facilities, and four in 10 plan to expand their Florida-based workforce.
In the past 12 months, 95% of subscribers requested information about or purchased a featured product or service, visited an advertiser's website, dined at a restaurant or stayed at a hotel after seeing an ad or article in the magazine.
Also in the past 12 months, our subscribers addressed a public meeting (31%); served on a non-profit board (34%); stayed an average of 22 nights at resort hotels; and took an average 6.2 overnight trips to Florida destinations.
Perhaps the most gratifying statistic is the 68.3 minutes that our subscribers spend reading an issue of our magazine. Even more impressive is that one in five spends an hour and a half or longer. In this age of notoriously short attention spans, that is a significant investment of your time, and it makes us even more committed to providing bona fide information that affects our valued readers and advertisers.