Credit: Image by Racy Bouknight on Flickr. Some rights reserved
The Audit Bureau of Circulation has today launched a new measurement tool for business-to-business publications to ensure an industry-wide standard of audience data.
Combining information from a range of different sources, the "total audience certificate" is intended to give an estimate of a brand's total audience as opposed to individual channel measurements.
"It enables publishers to effectively put their audience story across and have that supported by industry standards," said Jan Pitt, group executive director of client services at ABC, speaking to Journalism.co.uk, "which is incredibly valuable for them."
Because the B2B sector had been going through a "structural shift" from print to digital, said Pitt, it was vital to accurately represent the full picture while supplying an industry standard on research and audience figures.
"It means that everything is done in a similar way so products are comparable," continued Pitt.
"If you don't have regulation in any way then you don't offer a level playing field; data can be constructed in lots of different ways and everyone ends up not trusting it."
The new measurement uses the circulation and traffic data traditionally gathered by ABC as a "bedrock upon which the other elements of the model rely", said Pitt, such as readers per copy of a print circulation, readers on multiple platforms and demographic information.
"Traditional industry measurements of the type ABC have delivered in all its history has delivered data channel by channel, as with the multiplatform report." said Pitt.
"But a focus just on print for the business media sector is not so useful for them in terms of how they're trading, so there was definitely a hole in the market for something which helped them calculate multiplatform net audience figure."
"It's a hybrid approach but it's our first hybrid industry standard in our 82-year history," said Pitt, "so we're quite excited about it.
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