The Audit Bureau of Circulations is loosening its standards to allow subscribers of digital subscriptions and hybrid publishing plans to count as paid circulation. The board's aim is to accommodate newspapers as they move to bundled print/digital subscription offers and hybrid publishing plans, according to the ABC. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
But how will advertisers respond to the change?
Possibly not as publishers of this content may hope, according to some observers.
Newsonomics speculates, tongue-in-cheek, that if ABC's multi-platform strategy of adding online editions, replica e-editions, iPad editions and smartphone editions, comes to pass, the industry will see circulation reports unlike those ever reported. ("News Flash! Circulation Up 1042%!" is the title of the post).
Certainly there will be some information of value in the new reports with additional detail and more transparency. But it is an open question whether the new system will more helpful in selling advertising. For instance, ABC will allow a newspaper to count multiple copies from a subscriber who receives a print edition and has access to a digital edition and/ or mobile app. But, Newseconomics writes, does an ad buyer really care if a single person accessed a brand six different ways? Rather, buyers want such information as gender, age, household status, region, clickstream behavior and recent buying behavior.
The Nieman Journalism Lab also questions the how newspaper digital circulation data is parsed in a post from this Spring, published before ABC made its recent decision. It points to the Bend (Ore.) Bulletin, where weekday circulation grew 34.3% - courtesy of ABC approval at the beginning of the year for the paper to count e-subscriptions sold to current print subscribers for an extra 50 cents per month.
"As long as the subscriber can choose to opt in or out of the added digital subscription, the e-subscription counts as one paid subscription in addition to the printed one, even if the customer never accesses it." The Bulletin tacked 12,462 weekday e-subs to its core print circulation of 29,072, which is actually down by more than 1,000 from 30,155 a year ago, as a result of this strategy, Nieman said.
