News Corp withdraws from newspaper circulation audit, raising new questions about future of AMAA
News Corp Australia has abruptly withdrawn its newspapers from being audited by the Audited Media Association of Australia, dealing a near fatal blow to the future of print circulation audits in Australia.
In future News Corp will argue that advertisers should look to Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) which was created by the newspaper industry in 2013 to promote readership numbers, rather than circulation, as the key metric.
EMMA is run by research company Ipsos under the auspices of trade body NewsMediaWorks’ sister organisation Readership Works. Based on asking survey questions, EMMA offers data including audience demographics, media consumptions, lifestyles, psychographics, and product and service usage and attitudes.
News Corp is Australia’s largest newspaper publisher with mastheads including The Australian, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, the Herald-Sun in Melbourne and Courier Mail in Brisbane as well as a string of local and regional titles.
Let’s be honest, print “numbers” are a total sham. In any other industry, or even any other channel (read: digital) they would be called out for what they are – fraud.
Take the number of copies printed, make sure it’s on one of two audit dates which the publishers know in advance and double accordingly, multiply by the “readership” ie how many times some editor says the copy get passed around, assume every single ad gets seen by every single reader, add together with the number of weeks left in ascending Jupiter and you get your final number….
Lord have mercy.
Unfortunately, this move only helps reinforce the incorrect perception amongst many advertisers that newspapers and print are in some sort of terminal decline, which is not necessarily the case at all. Circulation is still an important factor in determining a print mediums potential to reach a certain demographic as is readership of both the print and digital versions of that medium. By understanding the trends in circulation it gives advertisers and their agencies a reliable independent evaluation tool to decide the correct allocation of advertising expenditure between the print and on line digital versions.
You’re completely wrong because publishers have consistently shown that over 3,004 people read each copy of every printed publication.
Have you never seen someone reading GQ or The Australian? Usually with nine other people reading it over their shoulder, all cover to cover of course.
And readers per copy is increasing because people can’t get enough of printed publications, often one copy at an office like KPMG will be read by everyone in the building every day. People even come in at weekends to read the Saturday editions too.
I’d be interested if Mumbrella could write an article delving more into readership/circulation – maybe with some quotes from EMMA/Roy Morgan/AMAA/iSentia/a few media agencies and a brand? I am still confused about the methodology – could EMMA provide info on how many people read each magazine/paper copy so we could see the engagement level (e.g. each copy of The Aus gets read by on average by 6 people etc.) – why/why not? Is it because people will then divide the readership it to get the circ info? Engagement is an interesting piece of information to know – we want to know that for influencers and as technology evolves there are an increasing number of metrics we are using to evaluate them and their following by using API info, etc. so it would be good to have further info on the data for print. I want to trust the readership figures because that’s all we’ve got now but I just need more information on them. Just a topic that I find interesting that could be considered for Mumbrella to cover more – not sure if others would also find it interesting. Much appreciated!
Argh this is annoying I am the only person that looks at this circulation figures giving the unknown will just keep newspapers going down further and further. it is so annoying they just leave it automatically. They can’t have one more audit then leave after announced. Readership is a con by how it is measured it means nothing to the company that produces newspapers if 10 people read it the same copy nothing.
Because it doesn’t make them any richer print circulations are important so we can get a good grasp on how they are going. So readers have a Idea what’s going on.
I don’t get it how do they think it will hurt there company by producing circulation figures hardly anyone looks at them. Well all the newspapers will be gone in 10 years anyways.