Free new media planning tool from Ads24

Esme Smit, manager: Ads24 Community Sales, says: "This is a pioneering project for the South African media industry. We believe in constant innovation and Compass24's market promise to you is to help you understand the market we serve in more meaningful ways."

Through the use of multi-basing (a tool that enables the combining of information from two or more databases), Compass24 combines Ads24's in-depth community research - 38 of Media24's community newspapers took part in the project - with the wealth of individual, household, population and decision maker data available through AMPS.

Marketing and research specialist Jos Kuper put together the methodology behind this project: "It is critical that media owner research, in the absence of industry research, be rigorously methodical and can withstand scrutiny. Compass24 has broken new ground in marrying the information from the community newspaper survey itself, with two important databases: SAMM and AMPS."

Using the software's "cross-tabs", media planners can compare information on community newspaper readers with the plethora of information available on AMPS and Compass24. This combination of quantitative information enables users to take lifestyle, shopping behaviour, media consumption patterns, preferences in advertising, and other consumer behaviors into account when determining the propensity of a community.

Users can customise their results by drawing down only the information that is most pertinent to them.

Compass24 is also integrated with South African Marketers Map, a geographical mapping system from the Unilever Institute, to provide the geo-specific data necessary in integrating community newspapers in the advertising mix.

Compass24 will not only reach media planners via the normal broadcast routes of Telmar, it will also be available 24/7, free of charge, to anyone with Internet access.

The website will be online from mid-October at www.compass24.co.za.