Verified Completes First Integrated Media Audits on Questex Brands
Reports available to advertisers less than a year after Questex cancels BPA membership.
Less than a year after canceling its membership with BPA, Newton, Massachusetts-based Questex Media has released this week its first round of Integrated Media Audit Reports with Larkspur, California-based Verified Audit Circulation. The reports include measurement of the integrated audience across all of the company’s engagement channels -- print, online, e-newsletters, events and webinars – for the period of April-September 2009. It also includes Web site activity over a six-month period.
The reports are being released for multiple Questex brands, including Hotel & Motel Management, Hotel Design, Nightclub & Bar, GPS World, LPGas, Response, Pit & Quarry, Travel Agent, Pest Management Professional and Landscape Management. December 2009 reports are also being released for Golfdom, American Spa and American Salon. [To view the complete audit report for Hotel & Hotel Managment, click here.]
In addition to providing the demographics for each specific brand channel, the reports also show the “gross reach” of Questex’s touchpoints – the total of each channel, including audience duplication – as well as the “unduplicated reach” – the total unique number of audience members across each channel.
"In this increasingly diverse media landscape, the objective of the integrated media audit is to aid publishers in demonstrating the total scope of their brand reach," Verified CEO Tim Prouty said in a statement. "The integrated media report will emerge as a standard for audit reports in short order once advertisers see the wealth of information provided."
Questex began its membership with Verified in April of last year amid frustration that BPA was not moving quickly enough to implement an integrated media audit statement of its own. “Things are changing so fast,” Questex audience development director Heidi Spangler said last year. “[Verified] is nimble and they’re not determining what we should audit. That was all it came down to. As new things develop, we want to respond to them and still have the auditing behind those claims.”
Six months after Questex canceled its membership with BPA, the auditing bureau announced the creation of its own integrated media audit.
Prepping for an Integrated Audit
Prouty acknowledged that the process that Verified went through to audit Questex’s brands was challenging, but said that the publisher was well-equipped. “There were thousands of files that had be analyzed and de-duped, which made things very interesting,” he told AD. “But in order to do what we did for Questex, there has to be an integration of the database. The company’s fulfillment company was able to do that, which allowed us to pull the samples we need. As a result, everything was properly represented.”
Prouty acknowledged that not every company has an integrated database or has the same mix of media products. Therefore, Verified’s audit was created to work with each publisher individually based on their goals and how they reach their audience. “Verified has been auditing all types of electronic media for a while now,” he said. “We’ve doing paid search auditing and reporting Web analytics in our print audit reports so that advertisers don’t have to look elsewhere for that information, so we’re prepared. This is a natural extension for us, as well as for the industry, so we’re excited.”
Although he declined to give a specific amount, Prouty said that more than a dozen publishers have either inquired about or are planning to complete an integrated media audit this year.
RELATED LINKS
Inside BPA's Brand Reach Audit
Questex Media Adopts New Total Audience Audit Process
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