Digital media helping, not hindering, traditional print products
Canada’s medical publications are flat lining, and that’s a good thing.
The Print Measurement Bureau’s 2011 Medical Media Study (MMS) shows no significant declines or spikes in readership among the country’s leading medical publications.
According to the MMS, average readership of the top five English and top three French medical titles among doctors remained relatively unchanged at 16,341 and 5,876 respectively (in the most recent 2009 study, readership averaged 16,089 and 5,952 respectively).
Reach, too, was relatively stable at 50.1% and 71.8% respectively, compared with 50.4% and 71.4% in the 2009 study.
The MMS is based on interviews with more than 1,000 randomly selected Canadian physicians, and captures readership data for 21 medical titles including Rogers Publishing title The Medical Post (also publisher of Marketing) and Parkhurst Publications’ Doctor’s Review, as well as association journals such as Canadian Medical Association Journal and The College of Family Physicians of Canada’s Canadian Family Physician.
This is the first MMS study since 2009, with president Steve Ferley noting that the research organization took some time to “re-engineer” the study to incorporate online readership. “It took a while to come to grips with how we should be asking the questions,” said Ferley.
While the number of physicians using a print publication declined from 98% in 2009 to 97% this year, the MMS found that use of media publications’ websites increased from 43% in 2009 to 48% this year,
More than half of all survey respondents (58%) agreed that medical publications are a valuable source for information on prescription products – second only to medical meetings (62%) – while 70% agreed that they are a valuable source of information for patient treatment (again trailing medical meetings at 73%).
“The range of media which is now available for pharmaceutical marketing is expanding, but it is not eating into the usage of print publications by physicians,” said Ferley. “They’re being read as much as ever.”
