Newspaper Works boss admits EMMA takeup is a ‘mixed bag’

Head of the newspaper industry body The Newspaper Works Mark Hollands has admitted the take up of its new readership metric by media agencies has been a “mixed bag”.

Speaking to Mumbrella on the day of the latest release of the Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) numbers, which reported national, metropolitan and regional newspapers all increasing their combined print and digital readership by 2.4 per cent, Hollands said that while some agencies were moving their rate card discussion to the new currency others were resisting.

“On an executional level it’s kind of a mixed bag,” said Hollands. “(The take up is) encouraging, we come at a difficult time for (media agencies) where there is a lot of change going on.

“We haven’t experienced clear air but everyone who has EMMA inside their organisation currently is doing what we thought would happen – they are using it. We are encouraging newspaper and magazine publishers to use it as their currency but sometimes the numbers are accepted and sometimes they are not depending on the policy of the media agency.”