Further Blow to Australian Circulation Audit

Publisher News Corp Australia has withdrawn its newspapers from the audit of the country's AMAA and will instead advise advertisers to use EMMA, which is based on readership numbers rather than circulation.

The AMAA (Audited Media Association of Australia) was formed in 2013 by the merger of the country's Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and Circulations Audit Board (CAB). Soon afterwards The Readership Works, an industry body funded by newspapers, finally named and launched a new newspaper and magazine readership survey, EMMA (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia), on which it had been working for some years. In the last year support for the AMAA has begun to crumble visibly with magazine publishers Bauer Media and NewsLifeMedia withdrawing a year ago and publication frequency dropped from quarterly to six-monthly in May this year.

The latest withdrawal is described by media news site www.mumbrella.com.au as 'dealing a near fatal blow to the future of print circulation audits in Australia'. News Corp is the publisher of The Australian, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, the Herald-Sun in Melbourne and Courier Mail in Brisbane, in addition to local and regional titles. The firm says the decision 'follows an extensive review with more than 100 advertisers and media agencies that highlighted that the existing print circulation metric is no longer a representative measure of today's cross-platform audiences'.

EMMA, conducted by Ipsos, is survey-based and covers audience demographics, media consumption, lifestyle, psychographics, and product and service U&A
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Newspapers published by major groups Fairfax Media and Seven West Media remain in the AMAA audit.

The AMAA, which has opted not to comment further on the News Corp announcement until its board had discussed the news, is online at www.auditedmedia.org.au . EMMA's parent organisation is at www.thenewspaperworks.com.au .