ABC ventures into digital measurement, backed by Nielsen's technology

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), an independent body that provides audited newspaper and magazine circulation, is now foraying into measurement of digital properties. This is the first such initiative to offer industry‐accredited digital measurement. The solution is being powered by Nielsen, who is providing a comprehensive end‐to‐end measurement across devices.

The service, which goes live from Q3 2016, fills an important gap for digital property owners by offering them precise audience metrics. The solution being deployed by Nielsen measures audiences consistently across PC and mobile, providing the media industry with highly accurate measurement of online text content, as well as key performance metrics such as reach, frequency and demographics.

Optimising big data to understand demographics, ensuring granularity of data while providing insights complemented by weekly sectional reporting across different devices, will empower digital property owners, advertisers and agencies to take informed decisions.

“The rate at which spends are shifting to digital, it has now become imperative to have a transparent system for understanding digital audiences, whether they are accessing information on websites or apps, from their PCs, tablets or mobile phones. This digital measurement service will add to ABC’s existing circulation audit service for publications. We are not restricting ourselves to the print publisher fraternity, but will extend the service to include digital property owners across sectors. This is a historic moment, as for the first time in India, an industry body has started a service of this kind” said Shashidhar Sinha, Chairman, Audit Bureau of Circulations.

“Nielsen’s collaboration with ABC is testament to our expertise in the digital measurement space. We are both privileged and excited to be associated with this landmark service,” said Prashant Singh, Managing Director, Nielsen India Region. “We know it is essential to understand digital consumption patterns to truly understand today’s consumer. For the digital property owners community, the industry backed numbers will lend credibility and provide a massive boost to their growing digital presence. This sophisticated solution will address fragmentation across niche digital properties, user segments of all sizes and most importantly a complete view across devices – giving advertisers and agencies a comprehensive picture and measure of return on investment for their digital spends.”

Hormuzd Masani, Secretary General, ABC, added here, “The outreach will be to all digital properties, going beyond ABC publisher members, and will bring about standardisation and higher accountability in measuring the consumer base with the backing of industry accreditation. This will prove to be an important and path‐breaking currency for a fast evolving and dynamic industry.”

Across media, digital is witnessing the highest year‐on‐year growth of nearly 30 per cent. While there are some marketers who have allocated over 20 per cent of their marketing budget on digital, nearly all brand marketers are looking to spend more. This is more so due to the fast‐growing internet user base, creativity and innovation possible on the digital medium, and the ability to better reach targeted audiences. The ABC digital measurement service will empower digital property owners to prove their capabilities in being able to reach the right audiences.