ABC -- Easy As... One, Two, Three

I like what the Audit Bureau of Circulations did this week. In fact, I like it a lot. As a mainly print entity the ABC was on the verge of irrelevance. Anyone in print publishing would either look forward to or rue the day when ABC quarterly statements showed up. It showed whether people were at least requesting your content, and at best, whether they were paying for it. I mean, what advertiser would advertise in a magazine that lacked a quality circulation?

As you can see that question has become a bit hollow in the digital world. As an industry we’ve come up with a lot of different ways of measuring readership and performance. Some of those methods are great, such as those driven by targeting technology. Some are not so great, like reach and frequency. But the ABC kind of back-to-basics measurements are needed right now. They’re needed because content sites that focus on one main property, like most newspapers and magazines, need to compete on fair grounds. The ABC has been working on some kind of audience subscription and measurement for about a year. It could have come back with something vague, which would have been organizational suicide. But it didn’t.

What it did was modify its definition of a digital magazine. Specifically: “a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base.”

The board encouraged publishers planning new e-reader editions or mobile apps to seek ABC evaluation if they would like clarification on qualification and reporting of their digital editions. It also gave initial approval to create new U.S. reports that better reflect a newspaper's total audience across a range of products. So newspapers and magazines can add e-reader distribution, mobile app purchases, total paid and verified circulation from multiple newspaper products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship newspaper. These circulations will be detailed in the report and totaled with all circulation.

So digital content entities can show who’s paying, on what platform and who’s not paying. It’s up to the advertiser to decide the value attached. That sounds to me like a level playing field and one where the strongest content will win. As print publishing moves online, individuality will become more important. The New York Times will not survive on line as part of a network buy. Neither will WSJ.com, SI.com, or GQ.com. The ABC just did them, and themsleves, a big service.