I’m not sure about EMMA
Readership numbers make my head spin.
Not least because it often feels like the more I learn about how they work, the less I know.
It will be hard for you to go near the trade press over the next few days and remain unaware of EMMA (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia). Not least because it’s being launched with the first big above the line marketing campaign conducted by industry body Newspaper Works that I can recall in the organisation’s seven year history.
When I first starter writing about media, the metrics were hard to get my head around. First there was circulation – as in how many copies had been physically printed and distributed. Then there was readership, effectively a guesstimate of how many times each copy had been passed to somebody else.
The two biggest lies in media:
1) Pass-on rate.
2) Jimmy Saville’s reputation.
It is just not true that even 4+ people reach each copy of a magazine or a newspaper across the print run. It never has been.
Even in a dentist’s waiting room (where people now read their phones) it wasn’t true – a quick flick did not mean a reader and certainly not a viewer of ads.
Ah so because you don’t see it , it doesn’t exist?
Good thing you’re not a statistician then Tim. You’ve just denied the validity of the whole science.
A dying industry still can’t justify it’s data.
Time to go and….die.
The start of this article is what I’ve concluded. Even with Emma
Finally Tim. Someone asking the right questions. Well Done.
#3 Dan, at least proof reading won’t be a dying industry thanks to people like you:-)
At last some balance in the debate about readership. Thanks Tim for not just re-hashing press releases and asking some though questions that need to be answered.
One thing I can’t get my head around is if the EMMA sample is 54,000…but they only ask newspapers read yesterday…does that mean there are only approx 7,700 people being asked about newspaper reading on any given day? How does that work?