Readership war is over: Publishers turn to Roy Morgan with emma closing down
Industry to move to a ‘Total News’ readership metric from July 1
ThinkNewsBrands has announced the appointment of Roy Morgan to oversee news readership measurement from 1 July. As part of this decision, emma will be retired.
Since 2013 advertisers wanting to plan advertising in newspapers and magazines and their digital products have had to decide between audience measurement from the industry-backed emma or data from Roy Morgan.
Readership has always been the key data advertisers looked to when assessing publishing success. However it became the only metric available after major publishers ceased releasing circulation data four years ago.
ThinkNewsBrands is backed by News Corp, Nine and Seven West Media. emma data was collected quarterly for the industry by research firm Ipsos with additional input measuring cross platform readership from Nielsen.
In a statement today, the industry marketing body ThinkNewsBrands said:
We have listened to the industry and acknowledge the need to implement a single unified readership metric for total news, produced by one entity rather than with multiple data sources.
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The move to a Total News metric brings clarity to the industry as all advertisers, agencies and publishers will now rely on one measurement, approved and used by all parties, enabling better campaign investment decisions through simplified media planning tools.
The commencement of the partnership follows work between ThinkNewsBrands and Roy Morgan to further refine Roy Morgan’s well-established readership methodology across news in both print and digital formats.
When the partnership begins in July, updates will be made within the Roy Morgan database such as the inclusion of additional publications and an upgrade of categories to more clearly represent the news platform as a whole.
ThinkNewsBrands will continue to release quarterly readership data, now termed Total News, in conjunction with Roy Morgan, with the first data release scheduled for August. Current users of emma will retain access to historical data to conduct comparative analysis where required.
