Australia will be the first developed print market in the world to kill audits – and advertisers didn’t say a word
Magazine audits are all but dead after the withdrawal of two of Australia’s big three publishers in the past few days. Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes argues that the industry will miss the transparency of the audit bureau when it’s gone.
When the announcement dropped from News Corp yesterday morning, I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or depressed. But I certainly wasn’t surprised.
Effectively, magazine audit transparency is dead.
Australia is about to become the only major English language speaking market in the world where publisher claims about circulations will go unchecked.
The move by Bauer Media last Thursday, rapidly followed by rival publisher News Corp on Monday, to drop out of the magazine audits feels very much like a calculated plan by publishers to kill the Audited Media Association of Australia, or at the very least its magazine print arm.
No surprises. I wonder how long it’s been since any audit was fair.
We didn’t say a word because there are none of us left to care.
This is absolutely brilliant news if you’re selling digital media.
I wonder if people who smoke buy more magazines, because basically no one else goes into a newsagent these days.
Circ numbers have long been dubious and readership numbers are almost pure fiction. I remember one survey where Zoo (god rest its soul) dropped thirty something percent of its circ but claimed to have increased readership. Pure fiction.
I expect no one said anything because no one, aside from print execs trying to remain employed, cares anymore.
Why should they continue to substantiate their claims. The digital world doesn’t substantiate their claims…
Good piece of journalism. Thank God somebody speaks up.
So are we entering a post-truth era now for magazines, or were we already in it?
Still can’t believe Bauer bought ACP, unbelievable
I scratched my head when they bought ACP too. What on earth were they thinking?
We live in a “post-truth” world now. Circulation doesn’t matter anymore. Nobody listens to techno.
Tim,
You report on radio ratings, TV ratings, digital ratings and OOH. But then question the validity of readership? Can you please explain how they are any better or worse, and why the bias? I don’t know, but it just seems hypocritical and a little bit ‘easy target’…
Full disclosure – I work for a magazine company
Hi Confused,
I’ve always seen the diary system of radio as a weakness too. Over the years we’ve extensively reported trials of the watches and other devices which capture actual listening behaviour. That feels like it would be a big step forward for radio transparency. I’m also not a fan of the fact that what gets press released to the media on radio survey day is only share numbers – not numerical reach, which is also measured but not shared.
At least with TV ratings, although it’s panel based, it takes place in real time. (Paging John Grono for science on that..?)
And outdoor, other than the launch of MOVE which we wrote about a lot at the time (about six years ago now I think), we don’t actually regularly report on outdoor audiences.
And yes, we do report on digital ratings, including our own audited digital numbers. They’re real, not survey based.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi Tim,
No system of measurement is perfect and that speaks true for all mentioned here, including AMAA figures.
While they are all flawed metrics, there seems to be an inherent assumption in your words here that ALL market research is inherently incorrect, unless taken in real time. And while I know this is not your intent, as marketers we need to trust that the research is conducted in an authentic manner that gives us a reasonable representation of the population measured.
Cheers
Dave
I was devastated about missing out on an internship at Vogue but then I remembered magazines are tanking and now I feel even better. Surely big advertisers will turn away in droves rather than trust claimed circulation figures?
Excellent commentary Tim.
The IPSOS readership survey uses a reader definition of (to paraphrase) “reading of printed newspapers / magazines in the last 12 months – including any inserts – anywhere, any time for at least two minutes”.
So if you flicked through an article in Big Rigs because it was the only printed material in the deli while you waited for your chips to get cooked, congratulations – you are now a Big Rigs reader!
The move from diaries to Peoplemeters to diaries for TV highlighted how inadequate the human memory is for accurately recalling what was consumed. The more evidence-based data we have for consumption the better.
The argument presented for moving away from circulation looks and feels like BS. I am very disappointed in this development and will be making future evaluations and recommendations for our clients with this lack of evidence very much front of mind.
It removes a very solid piece of evidence from the case for magazines and that cannot be a good thing for them.
Thank you Chris – that’s what we need more agency people to do is make it clear to the publishers that this is NOT OK and that there will be repercussions. Perhaps too late however – but brave and needed nonetheless.
Print circulation figures were never rock-solid – especially in b2b categories and free to street (street press) but for paid news-stand I would have always recommended to advertisers. Vale
Tim,
I’d like to add a few thoughts before we head off on our Christmas breaks. In no particular order:
The definition of readership is the same the world over. Read or looked into. In some surveys there are minimum reading time requirements. In the Roy Morgan survey, there is no minimum time required.
So yes, flicking at the checkout is just as legitimate as reading intently cover to cover. Remember that what advertisers are buying in the ad space is the ‘opportunity to see’ their advertisement. The person flicking at the checkout is just as likely to be in the advertisers target audience as those sitting down to read with a cup of tea. There are other measures to measure reader’s levels of engagement. Let’s not confuse and be subjective on what passes as readership and the opportunity to see.
Its fascinating that all the other surveys mentioned in your article, with the exception of Roy Morgan Single Source, are all owned or funded by the media they measure. Our survey is media neutral. We have media, agencies and advertisers subscribe to the survey we produce. It’s not owned by any one media. This is what gives advertisers and agencies and our media clients the confidence that data they rely on is produced without fear or favour.
It is this independence that is fiercely regarded and renowned. And why some of the media don’t always like the truth that it produces. So their alternative, then, is to fund their own survey.
I’m curious you put so much trust into the circulation results. The publishers provide these results. They have the ability to print extra copies or not and you have been a fierce critic in the past of all the dumping strategies of bulk copies.
Our data passes the ‘sniff test’. Our data makes sense with sensible relativities for readers per copy. You don’t see the wild numbers of pass-on readers mentioned in your article from our survey. Our survey often produces lower readers per copy – due to a more stringent and rigorous approach.
The other sniff test is how does our data stack up against other known measures. You will see on our website that we verify our data with ‘census’ statistics. Such as the amount in superannuation, the average personal income as recorded by the ABS. We ask our respondents these same questions. How much they earn. How much is in their superannuation. These are sensitive and difficult questions to ask. With the latter, I’d have to open those unopened superannuation statements of mine sitting at the front door ( but that’s another story…). The point is -we ask respondents these questions. But we don’t weight their answers to these known universes. ‘All’ we weight to is age, sex and geography as determined by the ABS – but our estimates of these sensitive measures – come to within a few percentage points of the total amount in superannuation and average weekly income as determined by the ABS. Tell me that is not impressive?!! And I challenge all the other survey providers to benchmark their data this way. So as the story goes, if we get these measures right, you can be confident we are getting the right results for readership and so forth. It comes from the same interview.
I’d suggest you take a closer look at all the surveys mentioned and see what qualifies a respondent to participate in that survey. In ours, you only have to be aged 14 years and over. I’d suggest you check to see whether respondents in the other surveys have had to consume the media being measured in a set period of time to even be qualified to be interviewed. Did certain commercial media have to be consumed ? Are results weighted to the Australian population ? Or are they weighted to a pre-set incidence of that media consumption?
We hold our data up to scrutiny by publishing comparisons constantly on our website. We are very transparent on the questions asked and our sampling and weighting frame. We have always welcomed anyone interested to visit our ‘engine room’ in Melbourne to understand the whole process from questionnaire design to data collection, processing and weighting. That invitation still stands.
In signing off, I wish you and your readers an enjoyable Christmas break.
Regards
Lisa Meunier
General Manager- Media, Roy Morgan Research
Lisa.meunier@roymorgan.com
Hi Tim et al.
Lots of issues here to cover.
I think the circulation data ran into trouble when the definition of what constituted a “paid copy” was being gamed last decade. For example, I could pick up a copy of the Sunday paper after a Swans game and that counted as paid because it was in the small print of my membership.
The rules re-write in 2011 broke the various types of circulation out into ‘buckets’. For example, it is perfectly legitimate to circulate copies into the airport lounges – in fact, it probably is one of the more high-value distribution outlets. Are these copies paid? Well yes they are – indirectly. Free to the flyer – but they were paid. Various rules such as ‘half cover price’ were debated – none worked. So the decision was made to identify them all – newsstand, subscription, bundled sales, digital sales, school sales. tertiary sales, airline sales, accommodation & hotel sales, and event sales. Sadly, I saw very little reported on these circulation breakdowns, with most press being on the headline ‘masthead’ figure.
Someone used the phrase ‘sanity check’. In some cases circulation is a sanity check, and in some cases it isn’t. For example, it is VERY handy to monitor Readers Per Copy (RPC) – not for the level of the RPC but for the trend of the RPC. And I notice some commenters were comparing a single circulation period (three months) with a readership period (twelve months) – a common but elementary mistake from people who should know better.
RPCs can vary dramatically. And for very good reasons. The longer the publication cycle, or the higher the subscription component (which is why I like the detailed circulation data to be available) there tends to be less pass-on. Older demos tend to pass-on less. Higher cover prices tend to pass-on less. Lads magazines have a very high pass-on rate … largely with the phrase … “Whoa, have a look at them!” (or similar).
Which brings us to the definition of a reader.
The most common/accepted type of question is along the lines of … “Have you, personally, read or looked into any of the following publications for at least two minutes in the past ….”. This is asked with different time frames (in order to calculate audience accumulation”. So, yes it will pick up some VERY casual readers (especially at the check-out), which we as advertisers wouldn’t necessarily consider a reader. But .. that is the international standard, so that is what we use.
But before you panic, we also ask how long the publication was read for. So, you need to look at the average duration read. That average would include all the ‘two-minuters’. I don’t have either the Morgan or emma data at my fingertips but I know it is WAYYYY higher than 2 minutes per issue for both sources and around the half-hour mark for the majority of titles [Morgan and emma – feel free to hop in here].
Circulation also has another, less seldom used, advantage. Generating readership for very small titles, community newspapers and regional newspapers is extremely hard because you simply can’t get sufficient sample size easily. This is where ‘class modelling’ can be used. In essence you ‘pool’ similar titles to get a usable sample size, and also pool their circulation, from which you can then derive the average RPC for the ‘class’ and apply that back to the individual circulations. With this method, at least you can get an indicative (but often volatile) readership estimate. For this reason alone, I would have kept circulation going.
Regarding Tim’s TV question, measurement is not really ‘real-time’ but near to it (and for very good reasons). The data capture is in real time, which is sent overnight as a ‘bundle’ to NielsenTAM. This is then matched to ‘reference signals’ to determine what was watched. This could be ‘live’ viewing (i.e. exactly as broadcast), ‘as-live’ viewing (e.g. you paused the DVR when the ‘phone rang and started watching again when the call was over), or ‘time-shifted’ viewing (e.g. playing back recorded previously broadcast material) which is currently up-to-seven days, but 28-day catch-up can also be done.
The good reasons why it is not real time, are that (i) the data has to be matched to hundreds of possible sources going back over 28 days, (ii) the viewing has to be validated (e.g. remove ‘viewing’ where you have not seen any user activity on any remote for hours), (iii) that validated raw data must then be weighted back to the population.
There was an instance in South America back in the ’90s when a now defunct research company dallied with ‘live ratings’. One night they had a live talent show on, and one of the contestants mistakenly thought she was an opera singer – but sadly she sometimes sounded more like a screeching cockatoo. The live ratings were fed to the programme director who called the station and had her hooked off mid-song! The following morning they found part of the phone-system went down for a short while which caused the ratings drop.
But back to the circulation discussion.
Overall, circulation by itself is rarely, if ever, used as part of the advertising transaction. It is an input to the decision, but the rubber hits the road around the readership. So, on this basis I do understand the decision to make readership primary as it is audience data, and audience data will be at the heart of a unified and harmonised cross-media measurement system that I can only dream of at the moment.
Re the “checkout reader”.
Spend a day at Coles. Count how many people have the time to browse anything in the checkout, and if they do, choose a magazine over their phone.
Yes, I realise this is a pretty literal interpretation of checkout reader.
Consumer readership audits may have an official ‘twang’ but an audit does not portray the interests of a human being to help guide advertising strategy.
Advertisers may appear to have yielded to the cessation of the official audit, however Advertisers can access more potent tools in collaboration with Roy Morgan Research.
The exciting emergence of IntelliTech; putting consumer media consumption and buying data at the fingertips of advertisers via a digital delivery system is the future.
Imagine sitting at your desk in a portal; clicking magazine brand engagement, frequency and filtering these readers by product/brand “likes” and future buying intentions (plus more), and viewing where these Australians live via a digital map. This is the future. Advertisers will get better insights into reader volumes & engagement, and brand affinity data. The potency of this intelligence is part of the wonderful ground-breaking benefits of technology.
Let’s give the old fashioned audit a big send off and clink our glasses to the future. Merry Christmas!
Cheers Matt and to the future of this incredibly powerful and engaging media!
You call out that someone could flick through a magazine while waiting for their coffee and be counted as a reader. But I never hear anything about with TV when the ad breaks kick in and someone leaves the room to make a tea or go to the bathroom. What about all those billboards out there but everyone on the bus is staring down at their smartphones or tablets?
There is so much negativity about print/mags yet the same issues people have with them can be applied to so many other channels.
At the end of the day it isn’t rocket science, you buy the opportunity to reach eye balls.
I can help you with these ones as well Anon.
Of course people leave the room during ad-breaks on the TV. They also flick around to other channels.
I did an analysis several years ago, and overall there was a 5%-8% drop in TOTAL viewers during ad breaks, but audience drops on individual programmes was higher. This indicates that there is more ‘flicking around channels’ happening than people leaving the room for the kitchen than the bathroom. Having said that, the instruction to the people in the TV panel is that they must be in the room and the sound must be audible on the TV.
So, when you hear that ‘people go to the bathroom when the ads are on’ – that is correct. But people do not go to the bathroom in EVERY ad break. Using the 8% figure above, that is roughly one-in-twelve. If there are four ad breaks in a one-hour programme that’s a loo break around every three hours. Even at my advanced age that seems reasonable.
Regarding billboards, you are 100% correct. That is exactly why MOVE was designed to NOT report on ‘passers-by’ – that is an ‘Opportunity-To-See’ (OTS) metric and not a ‘Likelihood-To-See’ (LTS) metric
This was done by using hundreds of hours of eye-tracking data to establish when there is a ‘gaze’ on an outdoor sign. We discovered that there are seven main factors correlated to gaze duration.
Some signs are unmissable to the driver – e.g. the silos near Glebe Island Bridge, and basically any overhead sign such as on a pedestrian bridge. Passengers can be distracted with papers, phones etc. and see less (your scenario) but some passengers like to look out the window and see more. Seat position in the vehicle is also critical.
Overall larger formats have an LTS that can approach 100%, while some of the smaller formats would be more like one-third.
So basically, MOVE is an ‘eyes-on’ measurement.
Irrelevant though.
TV and radio ratings are _relative_ to other TV and radio outlets whereas magazine and newspaper advertisers are interested in the absolute number of viewers. Everyone has a TV.
To be fair, when you’re talking about TV or radio ratings, you’re not counting the actual number of television sets or radios. To an advertiser, the readership is much more important than the physical sales.
Good for you Nick Chan in taking the lead to move to the future for mags and focus on audience consumption as other media do and advertisers buy.
Facts. Data. Science. All very 2015.