• by Erik Sass , July 6, 2006

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) Wednesday unveiled details of a new rapid reporting system for consumer magazine circulation estimates, marking yet another effort by the print medium to accelerate the flow of data about who subscribes, purchases, and reads consumer magazines. The new system, aptly named the ABC Rapid Report, will provide instantaneous online reporting of circulation audits of its member magazines to expedite delivery to advertisers and agencies. It comes as other new products are entering the market to provide more rapid and continuous data on magazine circulation and readership, including McPheters & Co.'s new Readership.com and an online panel being beta tested by magazine research giant Mediamark Research Inc.

Magazines participating in the ABC's rapid service will enter issue-by-issue circulation data within weeks of publication, which will immediately be made available online to ABC subscribers. Initially, only 15 percent of ABC member publications plan to participate, but the bulk of these are large, well-established magazines with circulations of more than 750,000. Major players that have already signed on include American Media Inc. and Meredith Publishing Group.

ABC Rapid Report will have to contend with McPheters & Co.'s Readership.com, another issue-by-issue online magazine data reporting service that also focuses on both circulation and readership. Introduced in February, Readership.com was the result of cooperation among major players in publishing and media planning, with sponsors including Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hachette, Hearst, Family Circle, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Starcom USA, GM Planworks, Mediavest, and Universal McCann. Data for consumer magazines is updated on a weekly basis, while national newspaper readership for major magazine supplements is being measured by section and day of the week.

"In our efforts to best serve the needs of our clients and to better understand what drives advertising effectiveness, we are demanding increased accountability of all media," noted Andrew Swinand, executive vice-president of Starcom USA. And the rapid rollout of multiple online reporting services does suggest that media planning executives are playing different services off each other--or at the very least, hedging their bets.

Indeed, MRI Interactive's online MediaPanels have been up and running since at least 2001, and have received substantial support from Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., among others. Any publication can commission a MediaPanel on a subscription basis to address any number of issues--including, of course, baseline questions like circulation and readership.