Advertisers are flocking back to print, according to recent figures from controversial new EMMA report. A boost in news and magazine readership sparks data rival Roy Morgan to pose serious questions about the reliability of its numbers.
- Simon Wake, managing director, Ipsos Media CT
Collected by Ipsos Australia, the second largest market research company in the country, EMMA, or Enhanced Media Metrics Australia, is an alternate measure to current readership data supplied by Roy Morgan. A marked variance in readership numbers between the two bodies has provoked debate about the respective methodologies and fears of over- or under-valuing the market. Adding fuel to the fire, while EMMA is collected independently by Ipsos with a claimed survey size of 54,000 interviewees over the year, the report is funded by the publishing industry.
Simon Wake, managing director, Ipsos Media CT, said, “EMMA is all about providing a more accurate picture of media consumption across Australia. Recent figures show an increased surety for advertisers around investment decisions. There is far less risk, particularly in printed publications.”
However, George Pesutto, general manager media and communications, Roy Morgan, had questions about the methodology involved in sourcing the EMMA data, citing issues with Ipsos’s process transparency, sample sizes and brackets and a lack of clarity about who exactly is answering the core metric questions.
“The data is reporting readers per copy that are the highest in the world, significantly higher than similar data recorded in the UK, in the US, and previously in Australia,” said Pesutto.
Wake explains Ipsos and EMMA’s new methodology differs from traditional approaches to cater to the current, highly fragmented media culture. He attributes higher numbers to two main differences, its daily weekday interviewing process and providing full-colour masthead reference and magazine cover artwork in focus groups. Wake asserts that this practice has full transparency and is backed by the Media Federation, offering a more up-to-date overview of modern readerships.
Pesutto has cautioned against the market’s newly heralded stability, however, adding that despite regional print news and some specialty interest magazine titles performing well, a predicted print renaissance is no sure thing.
“We’ve seen that numbers in print and numbers in online are holding steady, but people migrate from print to a mix of print and online, and that trend will continue over a period of time until publishers decide it’s no longer worth producing metro papers,” he said.
Self-styled innovation agency, Fusion Strategy, has indicated that this re-evaluation will likely be borne out by an imminent re-investment in print advertising by big brands. A new report indicates that print ad revenues have slumped at up to three times the rate of actual audience decline since 2008.
Speaking on the findings, Julian Clarke, News Corp Australia CEO, said, “the EMMA data release shows that the hunger for news and information across print and online continues to grow.”
Clarke agrees that the media channel mix is stabilising, with readers increasingly using both print and digital media in the information food chain. The report still showed a marginal drop print readership for most metro mastheads, while regional titles had increased readership quarter on quarter.
“Our newspaper brands continue to resonate very strongly with their audiences, collectively attracting more than 13.1 million Australians each month across print, digital, tablet and mobile – an increase on last quarter,” he said.