The Newspaper Works, is taking a fresh look at Australia’s magazine and newspaper readership tally following its backing of the launch this month of a new media metrics measurement platform – and its findings show that the printed word still shines in Australia’s changing media mix.
The new platform, Enhanced Media Metrics Australia – known as ‘emma’ – launched on 19 August, is designed to take a new cross-media snapshot on a monthly basis of the country’s media readership and audience trends.
The new platform, backed by the print media industry body, The Newspaper Works, is set to provide the local industry an alternative source of media trends insight from Roy Morgan Research, which until now, had been of the primary information gatherers in the sector.
According to The Newspaper Works, the fusion of Nielsen Online Ratings with emma makes it possible to combine IAB-endorsed online currency data with emma’s rich newspaper and consumer profiling data.
Emma’s launch was accompanied by the new platform’s first set of findings, which suggest continuing strength in newspapers as a mass medium, with newspaper titles across four platforms – print, web, mobile and tablet – reaching 83 per cent of Australians within a four week period.
According to the findings, newspapers reach a swathe of young and old Australians, with an overall age profile in line with the population, and mobile platforms providing targeted reach into younger age groups.
Printed newspapers continue to command a mass audience, with 12.8 million Australians seeing a National or Metropolitan title every month, 3.1 million of them being under the age of 30.
Web-based reading of National and Metropolitan newspapers is significant, comprising 5.9 million people, just over a third of all Australians. Eight out of ten also see the printed form over the course of a month, providing advertisers with the opportunity for coordinated targeting across the two platforms.
Newspapers on mobile provide access to a younger demographic, with 80 per cent of monthly users under 45 and 37 per cent under 30. Tablet newspaper reading is particularly strong in the 30-44 demographic (40 per cent of all tablet readers, as compared with 26 per cent of the population).
Analysis of the overlap between mobile and tablet newspaper readers reinforces that the two groups are distinct. Each platform has 1.5 million plus readers, but only a third of these are common to the two. The two platforms are far from interchangeable for advertisers.
Newspapers are clearly an important part of the tablet ecosystem, with nearly a third (30 per cent) of tablet users having used the device to access newspaper websites or apps in the last four weeks. Nearly one in five (17 per cent) of all smartphone users access newspaper content on their device. As tablet and smartphone ownership in Australia continues to grow we expect newspaper reading to do the same.
According to Mal Dale, general manager of The Readership Works, the information provided by emma will provide media agencies and advertisers with a richer class of data than what was previously available.
“This will be an historic day for the industry,” said Dale. “In the development of emma we believe we have met and exceeded calls from media agencies and advertisers for cross-platform accountability and greater accuracy, transparency and frequency of data.
“emma’s methodology will enable media agencies and advertisers to have confidence in the data to paint richer, more contemporary consumer portraits,” he said.
The new measurement survey was developed by independent research company Ipsos MediaCT, global leaders in local audience measurement. Ipsos conducts national audience surveys and is the official measurement system in 41 countries including the UK, Italy and France.
Despite Dale’s claims, however, some members of the local media landscape have expressed concern over the new platform, which is effectively bankrolled by Australia’s major publishers.
According to a report published on advertising and media news website, Mumbrella, senior media buyers are warning that emma will struggle to attain widespread take up among advertising agencies – the bread and butter of print media revenu