Last week an unusual thing happened. The Telegraph Media Group (TMG), publishers of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph announced that they were pulling out of the ABC (for overseas readers, that\u2019s the UK\u2019s Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry-wide measurement of newspaper and magazine sales covering around 1,200 titles).<\/p>\n
The official announcement from TMG stated: “The Audit Bureau of Circulations\u00a0results published, today, January 16th, are the final set of ABC results Telegraph Media Group will take part in.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The ABC metric is not the key metric behind our subscription strategy and not how we measure our success.”<\/p>\n
It is perhaps worth deconstructing this decision given other events.<\/p>\n
In effect TMG is saying they will no longer subscribe to the industry\u2019s measurement of sales. Any passing cynic, like me, will feel obliged to point out that at a time when the newspapers are losing sales (both the daily and the Sunday paper were down 12% December 2019 over December 2018) this rather smacks of \u2018we don\u2019t like this set of numbers, so we\u2019re ignoring them. Meantime here\u2019s another set, controlled by us.\u2019<\/p>\n
The \u2018controlled by us\u2019 bit comes from TMG\u2019s comment that they will be issuing subscriber numbers. Or in Telegraph-speak: “..our core subscriber numbers which are omnichannel and we will communicate these numbers each month”. PWC will have a role \u2018assuring\u2019 the industry of the efficacy of these numbers.<\/p>\n
Once again (and not forgetting that the \u2018C\u2019 in \u2018Cog\u2019 stands for cynical) it might be worth pointing out that the only value in any guarantee the industry has from TMG that they will publish subscriber numbers assumes you believe the word of TMG.<\/p>\n
Given this is the newspaper group that has from time to time been accused of behaving somewhat unethically when it comes to its journalism I\u2019m not sure that a promise to release data that it alone verifies before handing them over to PWC for \u2018assurance\u2019 is worth a huge amount.<\/p>\n
Remember the 2015 case involving the editorial coverage of HSBC, a major advertiser that led to the journalist Peter Oborne sticking to his principles and leaving the newspaper? Here\u2019s the Cog Blog on that 2015 story<\/a>.<\/p>\n Frankly whether you believe TMG’s promises or not this whole thing is a worry, for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n First, the ad business has made it very clear that they expect validated, independently verified data to be at the heart of media measurement and thus central to decisions on where money is spent, and how.<\/p>\n The WFA, and (in the UK) ISBA have both made this principle crystal clear.<\/p>\n Secondly, wasn\u2019t it the newspapers who were at the forefront of the fuss about Facebook data? Data that is not validated and is controlled by the vendor isn\u2019t worth the paper it\u2019s printed on, FB lied to their advertisers, and so on?<\/p>\n Indeed, the newspapers\u2019 own marketing association, Newsworks makes much of the quality of their members\u2019 data, their transparency in measurement and so on. And quite right too. I\u2019m not sure if Newsworks has commented on TMG\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n Third, it is rather insulting to the media agency business that TMG thinks they can just take away one piece of data and replace it with another. Agencies need sales data (via the ABC), subscriber data, PAMCO on and offline readership data, the more data they can get their hands on the happier they\u2019ll be, and the more rounded their advice to their advertisers.<\/p>\n Yes, of course the odd press expert has emerged to tell us all that sales don\u2019t much matter in an era of digital, but that\u2019s hogwash. All exposures matter \u2013 if they didn\u2019t why bother with a print title at all?<\/p>\n After all, those saying printed newspapers are irrelevant these days are usually the first people to complain when they appear in them as a result of some misdemeanour.<\/p>\n One commentator, Nick Langworthy got it right in \u2018Campaign\u2019<\/a>: \u201cThe ABC is the bedrock of all print trading; to remove oneself from this trading model removes oneself from trading conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t noticed agency CEO\u2019s condemning TMG\u2019s decision, although the IPA did issue a \u2018strongly worded\u2019 statement.<\/p>\n Why the silence from the leaders of our largest agencies? Could it possibly be something to do with protecting their deals?<\/p>\n