Audience-FAX Ponders A More Perfect Metric

By: Mark Fitzgerald The architects of the Audit Bureau of Circulations' (ABC) new report combining newspaper circulation with surveys of print and online readership acknowledged Thursday that its methodology puts newspapers at a disadvantage in comparison to other media audience measurements.

Audience-FAX measures newspaper readership -- a survey of the print audience -- over seven days, but measures online readership over 30 days.

"The newspaper (readership) focus has always been on seven-day while online has always concentrated on 30-day," said Bob Cohen, president and CEO of Scarborough Research, which measures newspaper, print and online audiences for the Audience-FAX.

Changing the print measurement to 30 days would be "something we'd consider, because it is unfair," Cohen said.

Audience-FAX is ABC's most explicit embrace yet of readership as the principle measure of newspaper. For most of its 93 years it was dedicated to promoting paid circulation, a measure of how many physical copies of a newspaper are sold.

ABC officials were at pains to emphasize that Audience-FAX, which has 206 participating newspapers, is a work in progress. Cohen explained:
"Rather than trying to get something that would be acceptable to all 900 diverse (member) papers, we said, let's get as much good information out there as we can, and then go from there."

One other factor preventing exact comparisons between newspaper and other audience-measured media, such as television, is if the Saturday edition of a newspaper is not included in the print readership number.

"The reason for that, frankly, it is that it's been the standard industry practice for many, many years," Cohen said.

The impact of including slow-selling Saturday editions in the newspaper readership number is "probably minimal," Cohen added.

He said, though, that ABC and Scarborough would likewise consider including Saturday readership, which Cohen said Scarborough already compiles occasionally at the special request of newspaper clients.

David Walker, CEO for the ad placement firm, Newspaper Services of America, said the Audience-FAX "will change how we buy ads," suggesting it would lead to more newspaper advertising.

Walker said, "We have only measured discrete parts. The most astute media people are realizing that with the synergies that can be achieved the discrete parts can grow as a result of that combinative effect."

[This story has been corrected and clarified from the original. One clarification was to note that Cohen's remark about the "probably minimal" effect of including Saturday readership in an overall newspaper readership number refers to its impact on the overall number. This version also eliminates a sentence that appeared to quote Cohen as saying that Audience-FAX and all the measurements that comprise Audience-FAX are not an "ideal metric." That quotation was taken out of context, according to a Scarborough spokesperson, who said Cohen was referring to "Box 4" on the Audience-FAX report that reports total unique Web site user/visitors and page impression/views. Because this data is reported by several sources, "there is no universally accepted metric for this data," the spokesperson said. "Mr. Cohen's reference to an "ideal metric" had nothing to do with Scarborough readership, Web site data, or the combined newspaper and Web site data," the spokesperson added. The story also should have noted that Audience-FAX allows an apples-to-apples comparison between online and newspaper audience numbers by including a 7-day online audience measurement along with the 7-day newspaper readership figure.]