The launch of readership metric EMMA on Monday will put Roy Morgan under serious pressure for the first time. Ipsos, the firm behind it, also delivers the UK's main readership survey. Ipsos said EMMA is better than what it does in the UK. Media agencies have said Roy Morgan should be worried by the MFA-backed newcomer. There may not be room for both.
Media agencies expect the first set of readership data from EMMA will likely show an uplift in daily newspaper readership. That's because of the reduction in lag of its online surveys. Conducted seven days a week, across a rolling set of 54,000 respondents they ask readers about what they have read the previous day rather than up to seven days ago.
While Roy Morgan has argued that its face-to-face weekend surveys are “premium”, IpsosMediaCT reckons EMMA puts Australia ahead of the UK in terms of readership data accuracy. Ipsos MediaCT also provides the UK's main readership metric.
Mark Hollands, chief executive of the Newspaper Works, talked up the arrival of EMMA as the “third major moment in the history of the newspaper and publishing industry”. He claimed it was “every bit as significant” as when publishers founded the Audit Bureau of Circulation in 1932 and the Australian Press Council in 1976.
Briefing trade and newspaper journalists yesterday, Hollands said that transparency of the system was key to trust and that Ipsos' involvement ensured it was “not publishers marking their own homework.”
Endorsed by the MFA, the MPA and the AANA, the data is audited by media research specialist Dr Rob Hall from Environmetrics.
EMMA fuses Nielsen Online Ratings data with EMMA survey data to give the media industry multi-channel analysis. It takes one month of net ratings data and fuses it into 12 months of EMMA readership data.
It also gives sectional readership for the first time. Media agencies have been asking for that for years. Ipsos has also broken down the Australian population into 10 new consumer segments.
The Readership Works also announced yesterday that data would be provided monthly from November. Asked whether it could be provided daily, The Readership Works general manager Mal Dale said that was possible if media agencies wanted to fund a 500,000-strong panel. Ipsos CMO Andrew Green said that it was “logistically not feasible”.
However, Dale promised more innovation was in the pipeline. “This is not an end point. We have to keep pace with change.”
He would not be drawn on what EMMA would cost, whether competition in the market would drive prices down, nor whether there was room for both Roy Morgan and The Readership Works.
Some media agencies were more forthright. Mat Baxter, head of UM, said there was unlikely to be room for two providers and that The Readership Works would be “stupid“ to price itself out of the market.
EMMA would put the incumbent “in very tough situation. I would expect most to migrate,” he suggested. While Roy Morgan had recently “stepped up its game” Baxter suggested it may be too late. “We've been asking for multi-channel analysis and sectional readership for at least eight years.”
UM's strategists trialling the product had given glowing reports of usability and performance, he said.
TMS managing director Andrew Lamb was more nuanced. He said that feedback from his staff had been “positive” but "we still don't have access to the readership data".
He said it would be “unlikely all of those bodies would endorse it and then not take it up” but that there may be some clients that used both tools.
Lamb anticipated that EMMA would likely show an uplift in mags and newspapers during the week because of the change in methodology but that any uplift would “not be stratospheric”.
Baxter said that any uplift would not necessarily result in increased spend by media agencies into magazines and newspapers but may potentially insulate them from “more significant declines".
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.
Have something to say? Send us your comments using the form below or contact the writer at brendancoyne@yaffa.com.au
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.