First ABC Insert Audits Released By Six Papers

By: E&P Staff The first Audit Bureau of Circulations audits of the accuracy of advertising preprints inserting and delivery were released for six dailies Wednesday.

Among them was the Chicago Tribune, which said its audit found that 98.7% of all advertising inserts in the test date?s Sunday edition were accurately delivered to the proper customers and were free from errors such as missing pieces or incorrect versions. The audit reported the Tribune distributed nearly 30 million advertising inserts on the test date. Last year, the paper handled more than 2.3 billion inserts in its Sunday editions.

"Our advertisers make significant marketing investments using inserts in our newspaper, and we want to make sure that we maximize the value of their investment by distributing their advertising messages accurately,? the Tribune?s senior vice president/advertising, Ken DePaola, said in a statement.

Schaumburg, Ill.-based ABC also released audits for the Washington Post; St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times; Dayton (Ohio) Daily News; the Journal-Gazette and the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind.; and Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa.

ABC?s Insert Verification Service (IVS), launched in January, calculates a ?total insert proficiency? number that measures the overall success percentage in getting the correct inserts to the intended customers. inserts reaching intended newspaper recipients. The IVS report also gives additional details on the verification field test and discloses error rates and conditions observed by ABC.

So far, 30 U.S. newspapers have signed up for the program.

IVS reports are available without charge to current ABC eStatement subscribers at www.accessabc.com, alongside ABC's Audit Reports and Publisher's Statements. A sample IVS report is also available online.

ABC advertiser representatives said the program was a step in the right direction towards building confidence in a newspaper?s ability to reliably and accurately deliver preprints.

"For the industry, inserts represent a significant amount of revenue,? Craig Sinclair, vice president of advertising for Walgreen Co. said in a statement. ?And for many retailers, including Walgreen's, preprinted inserts are the majority of our newspaper advertising expenditures. ABC's new verification service gives us the confidence to know that our investments are reaching the customers we want to reach in our targeted ZIP codes."

Quad-Cities Times Publisher Julie Bechtel said IVS would be an important marketing tool for the paper. ?Targeted zoning has become more and more important in our industry as advertisers request precise distribution by zip codes, neighborhoods and even by specific streets,? she said. ?While we were confident in our ability to meet these requests, we now have the documentation of the IVS report to support these assertions during customer sales meetings.?