It's not nice to surprise us, say ad agency media directors

Magazines who pay for their own circulation audits shouldn't change suppliers or procedures without the approval of the advertisers to whom they supply the resulting data. That would seem to encapsulate the extraordinary message delivered today by the Canadian Media Directors Council (CMDC).

There was a blizzard of "shocked and appalled" commentary from several quarters recently when, first, Star Media Group, Sun Media and Transcontinental Media were switching from the Audit Bureau of Circulations to the Canadian Circulation Audit Board - and, later, that Rogers Media announced it was switching the auditing of all 52 26 of its titles to ABC; together with the 26 already ABC-audited, this totalled 52. (The fact that the commentators often had a vested interest in or sat on the boards of one or the other of the two main auditing organizations was generally ignored.)

The CMDC issued its "Communiqué on Media Measurement, Accountability and Auditing"

The overriding purpose of the statement, CMDC (and ABC) board member Sunni Boot, president/CEO of ZenithOptimedia, told Media in Canada, is that "future changes in auditing and measurements practices, policies, reporting will not take place without consultation with, and ideally agreement by, the buying community.

"With accountability a headline subject in the industry," CMDC's statement continues, "the question arises as to what obligations and responsibilities sellers have to the buying community, and what expectations buyers have in the currencies that govern our business transactions."

It said that sellers (i.e. magazines and newspapers) in "similar media categories" should use the same measurements and accountablity standards. What's curious about this is that, despite the kerfuffle, nobody has specified how the standards employed by ABC and CCAB differ in any substantive way. Many magazines use CCAB and a few use ABC; many newspapers use ABC and a few use CCAB.
Nevertheless, the "compatibility" portion of the CMDC statement says:

"It has taken many years of evolution in Canadian media to move to a system that - certainly for the major media - is now directly comparable for all players," the comparability section of the statement continues, adding that "disrupting this system is not seen to be in the interest of objective and efficient media comparison, nor supportive of fair investment decision-making."

Boot said advertisers must be part of setting the standards for measurements and audits.

"Why? Because the results of these audits reflect the currency by which we trade," she adds. "The advertiser/buyer's voice must take precedence. We have selected and are paying for a medium with the expectation that we will deliver a certain audience. To provide confidence in those audience numbers, we must be fully receptive to the manner in which the data is captured and reported."

So, in fact, media directors are saying they should be allowed to dictate not only acceptable methodology but also whether a publisher can switch from one perfectly legitimate auditing supplier to another without asking permission first.