To provide quarterly snapshot of the advertising environment

AAN today launched a Business Trends Survey to provide alternative newsweekly publishers with a quarterly snapshot of the business environment. The survey will compile averages on revenue and advertising pages.

“AAN publishers want timely data about what’s going on in the business,” says AAN Executive Director Richard Karpel. “The Business Trends Survey is a systematic means to provide that information.”

Like the annual Financial Standards, results of the Business Trends Survey will be shared only with those papers who complete the survey.

The survey is designed to be simple to complete and administer. Here’s how it will work:

• In the middle of the month following the end of each quarter, AAN will issue the survey questionnaire in the form of a spreadsheet.

• Participating papers will return their completed survey via e-mail to AAN financial consultant Seija Goldstein. The data submitted by each paper will be kept in strict confidence and will be seen only by Ms. Goldstein.

• Ms. Goldstein will mail a customized report to each paper, with the paper’s own figures lined up next to the national averages. (Regional averages will be calculated if the participation level is high enough to produce meaningful data.)

The survey results will provide quarter-to-quarter and prior-year comparisons.

The entire process is designed to take two weeks, so participating papers will receive their customized report the first week of the second month following the end of each quarter.

In order to produce meaningful “apples-to-apples” comparisons, it will be important to maintain a consistent base of participating papers. Therefore, papers that fail to submit data on a regular basis may be permanently excluded from participating in the survey.

For a copy of the Business Trends Survey spreadsheet, click here. The deadline for participating in the Q3 2001 survey is Monday, Nov. 5.