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 The Audit Bureau of Circulations, based in Schaumburg, Ill., plans to begin incorporating the additional data for participating newspapers during the current six-month reporting period. Those results are due out Nov. 5.
Under the new initiative, newspapers will be able to report print, online and combined readership figures. The Audit Bureau will also include information on monthly unique visitors to
online newspaper sites, drawn from sources such as Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Inc.
Previously, newspapers only had the option to report print readership and overall
online site traffic figures in addition to their circulation numbers.
Audit Bureau spokeswoman Kammi Altig said the new metrics will benefit both newspapers and advertisers by providing a better picture of a paper's overall impact.
"Each copy does not just have one reader," she said. "This is a way for advertisers to understand just how many consumers their ad has the potential to reach."
Readership figures in the 81 top metropolitan markets will be gathered by Scarborough Research. Newspapers in smaller markets will be able to report figures from other research providers.
The Audit Bureau will audit all of the new figures, which it plans to include in its twice-yearly publishing statements, annual audit reports and in a new online database.
"This lends a third party's credibility and stamp of approval" to the readership and online data, said John Kimball, chief marketing officer at the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group.
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 Newspapers have been pressing the case to measure a paper's reach by readership, which gauges the number of people who read a paper and its ads, over the more traditional metric of circulation, which counts the number of copies sold.
NAA asked the Audit Bureau to include the additional figures in order to "level the playing field" with other forms of media, such as radio and TV, which are measured according to audience, Kimball said.
"TV is not measured by how many TV sets are sold or how many you have at home," Kimball said by way of analogy.
The Audit Bureau also said it will offer a new multimedia report that lets consumer magazines display print and online activity to advertisers in a single document.
The new report will include data on unique users, total visits, average time spent on the magazine's
online site and the site's most popular sections. The Audit Bureau will independently audit that data as well.
Newspapers across the country have been struggling to cope with falling circulation
-- and the declining ad revenue that results -- for years as readers increasingly turn to the Web and other media for news.
In the last six-month period ended in March, circulation at U.S. daily newspapers fell 2.1 percent on weekdays and 3.1 percent on weekends compared to the same period a year earlier.
[Associated Press;
by Adam Schreck] |
