Tribune Co. Doubles Size Of New ABC Insert Audit Service

By: E&P Staff

Tribune Co. more than doubled the number of papers participating in the nascent Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) Insert Verification Service (IVS) by signing up all of its 11 metro dailies Thursday.

With the addition of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and other metros from the company's Tribune Publishing subsidiary, the IVS has now enrolled 21 dailies.

IVS is a new program to verify the distribution accuracy of advertising inserts in which ABC auditors check samples of papers at the delivery route level.


"Getting Tribune Publishing's newspapers enrolled in IVS is a demonstration of the relevance of this new service in today's marketplace and a commitment to tomorrow's buyer-seller relationship," Michael J. Lavery, ABC's president and managing director, said in a prepared statement.


"Tribune newspapers have adopted industry recommended best practices and regularly measure preprint accuracy internally," Vince Casanova, Tribune Publishing vice president/circulation, said in a statement. "We're confident we are delivering a high level of accuracy at our newspapers, and look forward to being able to share those good results with our customers."

Last year, the Chicago Tribune was a participant in one of ABC's pilot audits.

John Wollney, the newspaper's director/preprint advertising, said the pilot audit "confirmed that our internal quality control procedures were working as designed."

Among the other dailies that have signed up for the insert audits are the Washington Post, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Miami Herald, and San Diego Union-Tribune.