ABC To Integrate Print, Online Data For Net Audience Figures

The Audit Bureau of Circulations took another step toward introducing aggregated audience figures on Tuesday. That's when ABC's board approved plans to develop various cross-media measurements for ABC reports. As part of this preliminary step, the board revealed plans to use data from newspaper research firm Scarborough to produce in-market net audience figures, combining print and online readership without duplication.

With data from ABC and Scarborough as well as the Newspaper Association of America, the new service would give newspaper publishers the option of providing advertisers and media planners with print and online readership in a combined net-audience figure. The figure could be included on ABC newspaper reports as early as September 2007.

The structure of ABC's proposed aggregated audience figure varies somewhat from medium to medium, but the basic rationale is the same. As their Internet operations grow, publishers need easy-to-read summaries of their various audience metrics presented in one place for convenient comparison.

advertisement

advertisement

ABC's initial proposal for the service, in the form of a "Consolidated Media Report," stirred some controversy when it was first announced last July. At the time, newspaper executives said ABC was positioning the figure as a measure of total audience reach, although it wasn't extracting duplications between offline and online readership to determine net audience. They also raised doubts about how ABC's pass-along readership figures were determined.

Since then, ABC has been cooperating with Scarborough to import data from its Integrated Newspaper Audience metric, which does extract duplication between online and offline readership. Gary Meo, senior vice president, print and Internet services at Scarborough, described the new metric in an August interview: "Newspaper Web sites are attracting people that may not read the printed paper, resulting in audience growth overall. Demonstrating the strength of the combined print and Internet audience is critical to the future of the newspaper industry."

Business-to-business publications are the first medium to have general access to the new aggregated figures. With the ABC board's okay, as of June 2007, business pubs will be able to report an aggregated figure--including qualified circulation, Web site unique visitors, pass-along recipients, and e-newsletter distribution. The data will be included in a sidebar on the front page of ABC publishers' statements and audit reports.

Similar measures for other media are still in development, but the board's decision indicates a clear intent to introduce them within the next year or two. With Tuesday's announcement, the board also directed ABC's consumer-magazine buyer and publisher advisory committees to compile a list of detailed recommendations for multimedia measurements to be presented at the next board meeting in July. The proposed "Multimedia Publisher's Statement" would detail both print circulation and ABC-audited Web site traffic.

Next story loading loading..