The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) debuted its new consolidated media report (CMR) in Canada this week in partnership with Postmedia’s National Post newspaper.
ABC says this new report gives an all-encompassing picture of a publication’s true audience, including data from several print and digital distribution channels.
The new CMR allows publishers to present a complete snapshot of the total brand rather than just the printed product, said Joan Brehl, ABC Canada vice-president and general manager. It also includes social media measurements on Facebook fans, Tweets, websites and apps. Each CMR is customized to suit the needs of an individual newspaper.
The Post’s CMR includes detailed data on print circulation for the daily paper and its Financial Post magazine, page views and mobile access of the related websites, mobile app downloads on smartphones and tablets and social media statistics.
“The idea was, first off, to bring all the possible ways that we make our content available to readers into one powerful document,” Post publisher Douglas Kelly told Marketing. “We wanted to do what we could to put independent numbers behind the story we’re telling.”
Since acquiring the Post from the now defunct Canwest, Postmedia has been re-positioning the brand as a digital-first media organization.
“We believe we are leading on this front in terms of the type of pitch we’re putting out to agencies and advertisers, and this is about giving them the numbers to help us build a pitch for their clients together with them.”
Yuri Machado, vice-president, advertising sales at the Post, added that the industry has always wanted one form of measurement for today’s multiplatform world.
“It’s a difficult thing when you have different associations like NADbank and PMB and comScore that don’t necessarily work together, but over the past three to four years at the National Post, we’ve been pushing the strategy very consistently,” Machado said. “So this is the validity piece for our sales force… This is pretty breakthrough to have one of the big bureaus reporting social media numbers as well, and that’s a key part of our business.”
“Agencies need that third-party brand of approval to really open their eyes to it in a different way, so we’re hoping this is going to do that for us,” added Kelly.
The new CMR will help the Post pitch its agencies and partners a multi-layered pitch, he said. “Not only are we saying we’re making our content available across these [multiple] platforms, we’re also saying ‘If you want your brand against a specific type of content, we can offer you the opportunity to advertise against, say, mortgage content in the newspaper, in the magazine, on the website and down the road on mobile in terms of the iPad.”
ABC’s Brehl believes the reports demonstrate that newspapers are not losing their readership. “It’s just coming from different places and [publishers are] moving with the times to follow that reader… We really saw [the new CMR] as an opportunity to demonstrate the full potential of the breadth and depth of a brand as it exists in today’s marketplace.”
