Single Magazine Measurement Metric Would Be A Mistake
A single metric for measuring the reach of magazines would be a mistake, but merging both the NRS and ABC business infrastructures would be a successful cost-cutting move for the industry.
This was the view of panellists at yesterday’s ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’ seminar, held by MediaTel Group. Duncan Edwards, chief executive of The National Magazine Company, said that the “idea of the NRS and ABC infrastructures going together seems to be profoundly sensible” as the “cost of these institutions for those of us who pay for them has been rising faster than inflation.”
He added: “In a low growth environment all costs need to be looked at, although both institutions [the ABC and NRS] should exist for entirely different reasons.”
Edwards also expressed the view that there was a “gradual creep” towards a single measurement figure, which would be a mistake. He said: “It would be disastrous if the measurements of magazines and websites or e-zines were under the same metric and we are sort of creeping that way with the ABC and I think it’s a mistake.” However, Chris Boyd from the ABC pointed out that the organisation had “stood very firm” on the matter of avoiding a single figure, “against a lot of hostility from a lot of publishers.”
Edwards said: “The ABC is used by many as a negotiating tool for finding value in advertising and clearly that’s ridiculous because circulation is not a proxy for advertising value, never has been and never will be. Readership is the correct way of measuring value for advertisers, not circulation, and our industry collectively has been woefully bad at giving that message to the advertising community.
“We are to blame ourselves for allowing that to happen and so we need to do things now to make sure that the correct metrics are used for the correct purposes.
“The ABC should be there to count copies that are sold, different metrics should be there to count copies that are free, and the NRS should be used to measure both the quantity and the quality of the audit’s interaction with the medium.”
Caroline McDevitt, managing director of IPC Advertising, was also keen to keep both the NRS and ABC as separate forms of measurement, as was Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media.
“Having two forms of robust measurement is very important,” he said. “I think it would be very dangerous to send out a message that NRS was the only way to measure the reach of a title. I think if we adopted that as an industry you’d certainly have no more launches, because they would be completely untenable.”
He continued: “It is incredibly important for buyers to have as much information as possible and for buyers to be able to triangulate these. If we move to simply one of those forms of measurement then I think we would be poorer as an industry as a result.”
However, Roger Pratt from the NRS stressed the two bodies were looking at the possibility of releasing data on the same days, and merging the infrastructures that look after the creation of the two sets of metrics. Essentially, creating one organisation that does two different jobs.
ABC: 01442 870 800 www.abc.org.uk NRS: 020 7242 8111 www.nrs.co.uk MediaTel Group: 020 7439 7575 www.mediatelgroup.co.uk