February 14, 2010
Source: MediaBuyerPlanner

A number of magazines in recent years have decided to forgo their membership in the Audit Bureau of Circulations, choosing instead to be audited by other firms or to skip being audited altogether.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations has lost about 100 members in the last two years, and, while many of those losses come from titles that have folded, many others are those that have smaller circulations and could no longer afford membership, writes Mediaweek.

An ABC audit can run as much as $10,000 a year for a small publication, and some titles that receive little national advertising found there was limited payoff for being audited by the ABC.

The Utne Reader was one such publication. “The ABC audit is expensive, and we find the only magazines we have that benefit from the audit are those who get a significant amount of attention from major ad agencies,” said Bryan Welch, publisher and editorial director of Ogden Publications, which publishes Utne Reader. Welch said the audit was not a worthwhile investment for that magazine.

Dallas’s D Magazine recently left the ABC for the Circulation Verification Council. That magazine’s editor and publisher, Wick Allison, says advertisers are more interested in the quality of the publication, who it’s reaching, and how effective the advertising is than in an ABC audit. “With a city magazine, it’s very easy to tell if your advertising is working,” Allison is quoted as saying.

The defection of smaller publications from the ABC could eventually put pressure on the audit bureau to rein in its pricing, said Mike McHale, founder and chief media officer at Cleverworks. The ABC, for its part, says it hasn’t raised rates in more than three years.

Magazines across the board are looking to control costs at a time when advertising and circulation is on the decline. Newsstand sales for consumer magazines fell 10% in the second half of 2009, compared to the same period the previous year, according to the ABC.

Ad pages plunged 25.6% in 2009, while ad revenue fell 18.1% for the year.


Also see: Mags Ditching Audit Bureau of Circulations (Mediaweek)