Bauer Media pulls out of audit body AMAA, leaving market without circulation data
Bauer Media has resigned from the Audited Media Association of Australia (AMAA), meaning the industry will no longer have access to independently verified circulation numbers of Australia’s largest magazine publisher.
Bauer – whose titles include Australian Women’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Gourmet Traveller, NW and Woman’s Day – is also understood to be in talks to acquire the magazine assets of Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines.
The move by the German-owned publishing company to remove all its mastheads from the AMAA’s audits casts further doubt on the industry body’s future viability. Fairfax Media withdrew its digital subscriptions from the audit in August. And CarAdvice, Pedestrian.TV and Bauer’s The Australian Women’s Weekly have all withdrawn from the body’s digital traffic measurement service in the past few months.
The withdrawal of Bauer Media from the AMAA leaves just Pacific Magazines and NewsLifeMedia as the big consumer magazine publishers participating in the magazine circulation audits.
In today’s announcement, Bauer said it would now sign up to readership data Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) which was set up by publishers about three years ago, along with the existing readership data it receives from Roy Morgan Research.
However, both of these metrics are based on surveying the public to ask them which titles they have seen, rather than on hard data of actual sales and distribution verified by the AMAA.
Nick Chan, CEO at Bauer, said in the statement: “In an increasingly competitive media market we have to focus on the total audience delivery of our brands, rather than a measure which is based only on copy sales.
“This will make our magazines more competitive with other main media such as television, radio and OOH, which is already traded based on the size of audiences.
“The AMAA is a highly effective organisation, but circulation audits do not properly represent how consumers are interacting with our brands across different platforms, nor do they reflect the integrated media discussions we are having with our advertising clients.
“Connected audiences across multi-media channels is where we see the future of magazine brands in Australia.”
The EMMA readership survey, conducted by Ipsos, is released monthly.
Chan said: “The addition of EMMA and, in particular, its fusion of Nielsen’s digital audience data, will give advertisers greater visibility on the consumers engaging with our brands. In addition to the data from Roy Morgan, we have the most granular view of total magazine brand audiences across print and digital channels.”
The AMAA has been approached for comment.
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This is dumb
Any media buyer knows that readership data can be full of fluff, whereas circulation data is real (well, when it’s not being fudged by the publisher which used to happen quite a lot).
The only thing mags have left which digital doesn’t is ‘reliable circulation and sales data’…..if someone bought a mag then mostly, this is recorded and real.
Digital audits on the other hand are laughable mostly and entirely unreliable.
So Bauer decides to drop the one thing that is real and do what? Use readership data which is based on panels and is notoriously unreliable because of the variables involved. Worse, they want to mix online and offline data somehow and combine the too for some sort of weird engagement figure. Reading a mag is not comparable to reading on the web. You need to measure and report both. Properly. This is big retrograde step for the whole industry.
They just want to confuse people because they are running scared. I’m no fan of the AMAA but circulation audits are one of the only ‘real’ media measurements left. Dropping them is an admission of guilt and a clear intention to go opaque – like Facebook and Google are with their digital numbers – and fake things.
Funny how the supposedly highly measurable digital era is leading us all into a much more murky measurement world. Things were actually much clearer in 1970.
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Stepping away from proper auditing and toward the shammery of EMMA is another win for opacity in media.
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Jeremy,
emma readership is conducted via a survey, it is not derived from a panel.
It is completed online as this provides convenience to the respondent and permits the inclusion of actual magazine covers, not a typed list.
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Hi Mumbrella,
Have you guys stopped reporting the EMMA newspaper metrics, and other readership surveys? I notice that News Corp, particularly the Tele and The Oz, publish regular articles with misleading stats suggesting their reader numbers are surging. But when you actually find the data it is clear that they are completely manipulating the truth. Perfect case in point is an article in today’s Tele which refers to its growing readership, while totally failing to mention the fact the SMH has over 1 million more readers than they do. Mumbrella used to report these stats, and without these reports it is hard to ascertain what is really going on.
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Hi The Facts,
We’ve never been in the habit of reporting the EMMA numbers on a monthly basis, for the same reason that we don’t do the Roy Morgan Research readership numbers every month – the methodology doesn’t allow for the same ‘hard science’ as a circulation number.
However, if we hit a time when the circulation data is no longer available for most of the market (and depressingly, media agencies and advertisers are willing to tolerate this) then we may be forced to think again.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I come from a background in radio where these “surveys” have been the only available metric ever used. Surveys don’t reveal the true numbers of who listens (or in the case of magazines, reads) and at what time they do – they are relying on people’s memories to recall what they heard/read and when – a completely unreliable and dubious way of supposedly tracking things. In this day and age, why hasn’t it changed? For the same reason Bauer is now pulling out of hard, fact-driven reporting metrics – they stand to lose the most if the truth is revealed. I have checked out EMMA – honestly, the report is clearly fluffing the engagement metrics heavily and there seems to be significant crossover with reporting as others have pointed out. How long can these media brands get away with this? With increased knowledge of digital reporting metrics, digital marketing campaigns, SEO and inbound content marketing, probably not very long. They are truly taking the proverbial now.
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God forbid magazines should finally stop answering to the fairy godmothers and actually start acting on what is real in the industry. Who seriously buys on circ? and what client is more interest in how many mags were scanned at the register than how many people will see and be influenced by their ad? While the industry continues to shift magazine money to the “opaque, fake” Google and Facebook (Jeremy) why would magazines continue to waste time on a redundant measure that – in the scheme of reaching audience for clients – means absolutely nothing?
And for the record, both readership measures stand up against all others even with their many flaws.
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Isn’t the bigger story here in this paragraph?
“Bauer – whose titles include Australian Women’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Gourmet Traveller, NW and Woman’s Day – is also understood to be in talks to acquire the magazine assets of Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines.”
Surely the fact that Bauer is in talks to buy Pacific’s mags is huge news.
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick? Happy to stand corrected by Tim Burrowes or someone else from Mumbrella.
Cheers,
Nigel.
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Thanks so much for your reply, Tim. In other words, along with what seems like many in the industry (apart from the publishers themselves), you don’t put a lot of faith in the accuracy and relevance of EMMA etc. Does this mean the ABCs are the key metric you report on? When do these come out?
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Oldest cliché in the book … you can still do anything with numbers. It’s always worth a laugh when a mag/newspaper drops five per cent of its audit figure and the publisher/editor/spinner ties themselves in verbal knots turning this into some sort of a plus. Same for TV/radio ratings.
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Hi The Facts,
The ABCs are provided by AMAA, so those are indeed the stats (key ones, in my view) that Bauer will no longer be a part of. And to answer your question on timings, the ABCs for newspapers and weekly mags come out every three months, and the monthly mags every six.
Hi Nigel,
We’re not first to report that. It’s been (from memory…) in The Australia previously. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a non-paywalled link though.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Thanks for the clarification, Tim.
All the best,
Nigel.
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