Danie Botha
As with BMi Research’ existing promotional print advert tracking service, Print Ads Online gathers its data from all national daily, weekly, monthly and community newspapers and magazines, and makes it available within 24 hours of capture.
Called Print Ads Online, the dashboard is tied into the print ad research categories clients have already subscribed to, but provides them with 24/7 online access to this data, in real-time, as opposed to solely via the traditional emailed reports. Although these existing delivery methods will still be used, BMi Research clients now have the convenience of accessing this data while on the move as well.
“We know our clients are busy, and sometimes don’t have access to their laptops or have the time to go into Excel and manipulate the pivot tables there to extract the exact information they need. With Print Ads Online, clients can quickly access the portal on their smartphone, click on the section they’re interested in, and obtain all the necessary data they need. In addition, this new portal works in conjunction with BMi’s existing mobile pricing app, enhancing this convenience for manufacturing and retail professionals even further,” explains Danie Botha, account manager at BMi Research.
The portal is accessed via a login facility, to ensure all client profiles remain confidential, with the unique home page featuring those specific print ad categories to which clients have subscribed. A menu with drop-down options on one side allows users to easily navigate the portal like a regular website, clicking on the criteria they want to investigate further.
These criteria include pricing, segmented into ‘promotional pricing’, to compare the promotional price of a product against other products and across different retailers, and ‘trended pricing’, to analyse promotional price trends over time. Both sets of information are available in graphical and tabular formats.
The ‘adspend’ feature allows users to measure promotional activity on a brand or product and assess whether the brand is gaining sufficient share relative to its spend, while the ‘campaign days’ feature enables users to track promotional campaign days by product.
In addition, the ‘image search’ function makes it easy to locate and view an image of the actual print advert, as it appeared in the press, and the ‘criteria filter’ allows users to sort or customise their data selection according to the date, product, store or campaign they’re tracking.
Botha says one of the biggest differentiators of this system over others in the market is the ‘favourites’ feature. “This function revolutionises how clients access data that they regard as the most important. It enables users to compile a list of favourite searches, for example, tracking the promotion activity of a specific coffee product advertised by a specific retailer. Then, every time that user logs on, all the data matching their query is presented there, updated, ready to be viewed. This eliminates having to input the same search and filter criteria each time, providing the exact data they need, as and when they need it,” he says.
Another key feature of the portal is its intuitive export function. Unlike other online print ad trackers that are only able to export visuals like graphs and tables as static graphics, Print Ads Online exports the visual and all the backend data attached to it. This is critical for users who need to export key data into Excel.
While the export and favourite functions, as well as the portal’s mobile capability significantly differentiate Print Ads Online in the marketplace, Botha says it’s the ability of BMi Research to seamlessly integrate this tool into its existing suite of research solutions that really sets it apart.
“Print Ads Online can work in isolation, but it becomes a much more powerful tool when combined with our other industry-leading products, like our in-store observation service that physically captures the price of products on the store floor. By combining these two products, a client can now see what a product normally costs as well as what it costs on promotion, demonstrating the full depth of the promotion. These complementary products allow us to provide our clients with holistic solutions that enable us to fully answer their business challenges, giving them that strategic edge that is so sought after in the current economy,” Botha notes.
For more information or other BMi Research products please visit: https://www.bmi.co.za/printads-online/ or please contact Danie Botha or Cindi Collett at BMi Research on (011) 615-7000.
