News mag Focus wins award for RFID research
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GERMANY-- News magazine Focus has won an award from RFID Journal for its use of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology to research reading habits.
The magazine was given the ‘Most innovative use of RFID' award for a tool developed in partnership with Austrian RFID specialist RF-iT Solutions, German technology firm Infineon and Australia's Magellan Technologies.
The system, called M-Meter, involves attaching stamp-sized chips to every double-page spread of a magazine, which is displayed on a special holder that records what pages were looked at and when. The technique is similar to one tested in the US last year by Mediamark.
RFID technology is primarily used in logistics and inventory management to tag objects so they can be identified and tracked.
“Based on our measurements we can demonstrate to the advertising business whether their advertisements produced any contacts in an issue and, if so, how many,” said Frank Michael Miller, managing director of Focus.
Focus is also combining the technology with recall tests in 100 households. “We expect revealing insight showing for which advertisements contacts are measured, and which of those advertisements the respondents then actually remember in the copy test,” said Anna Maria Deisenberg, head of marketing research for the magazine's publisher.
Author: Robert Bain
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