ABC has today launched a new service for magazines, newspapers and doordrop media, which for the first time certifies the quality as well as the quantity of a household distribution audience.
Using a new two stage process, ABC will verify the level of distribution to households and also report on the likelihood of those households to meet a set of defined targeting criteria using third party geo-demographic segmentation tools such as TGI, Mosaic or Acorn.
Designed to serve the needs of advertisers and agencies interested in effectively targeting a specific profile type through free media, ABC’s certification hopes to help identify those titles best suited to delivering the audiences they want and give greater confidence and trust in using household distribution as an effective advertising channel.
Commenting on the move, Jan Pitt, group executive director, client services, ABC, said that the new service will bring more transparency and trust to the industry, ultimately giving greater confidence to media planners that targeted household distribution is an effective rout to market.
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“In the past there have been no industry standards or verification of whether audiences claimed as targeted according to specified demographics, were in fact delivered via free household distribution or door drop media,” Pitt said. “Mistrust of targeting methodologies has also be a hindrance.”
A key challenge for the media industry, Pitt says, is that advertisers want to buy audiences that match their objectives; however, this does not always fit with the distribution offered by media owners – “leading to waste”.
“With this scheme media owners can identify households that are clearly described and likely to be attractive to particular advertisers,” she added.
“This narrows the potential mismatch that can occur, providing a well targeted environment which should represent additional value to advertisers over less targeted media options.”
The wider industry has also welcomed the move, with Mike Colling, CEO MC&C, commenting: “From an agency perspective, I welcome this move by ABC to establish an industry standard on the planning methodologies and data sources used to reach different audiences at a household level.
“This will bring Doordrop Media into the fold of gold standard media auditing.”
