And the Award for the Most Confusing ?House ad? Goes to ?
by May 27, 2002 12:00 am 74 views
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has been running a series of ads showing the newspaper is preferred by Northwest Arkansas readers in almost every category over its rival The Morning News.
But, some of the numbers just don’t make sense.
Typically, more people read newspapers on Sunday than any other day of the week. So when Urban & Associates Inc. extrapolated readership statistics after surveying 800 people, the Boston-based research firm said the D-G had 22,030 readers in Fayetteville on Sunday and 18,133 on weekdays. That sounds logical.
For the Morning News, though, Urban counted 5,002 Fayetteville readers on weekdays and only 3,604 on Sundays, according to the D-G ad published on May 17. In every other area city, the ad said the Morning News had more Sunday readers than weekday readers. It sounds like Urban may have gotten a couple of numbers switched.
According to the D-G’s ad on May 12, Urban found that the only category (out of 13) in which readers preferred the Morning News was “easier to read.”
If the Morning News hired Urban to do a survey, would the numbers be opposite?