Spectrum - Mainstream Multiple Cover Research

"HOW many front covers does a magazine have? The logical answer — one — is outdated.

In an effort to woo readers — and generate additional advertising revenue — magazines are being published with two, three, four or more front covers, typically appearing one after another as if a printing press had run amok."

(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/business/media/a-multiplicity-of-magazine-covers-and-just-as-many-reasons.html)

Multiplying the number of front covers — each bearing a different image and, on the inside, a different ad — joins a panoply of nontraditional approaches at magazines. Among them are split covers, bearing a variety of images that readers are encouraged to collect; flip covers, printing a magazine in two sections with a back cover that becomes a second front cover when turned upside down; and gatefold covers, which fold in or out to form exotic shapes.

The challenge of measuring multiple magazine covers can be expected to be a constant issue in the measurement of specific issue readership, as multiple covers are a tactic which publishers are using increasingly as they seek to attract audiences in this age of fragmentation and competition with other media and platforms.

http://www.nommedia.nl/1856193/PDRF_2011_Multiple_Covers_in_SIR_MEasurement.pdf?v=0