The Economist Reveals Brand’s Total Reach With New CMR

Third publication sign up for the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s total audit.

By T.J. Raphael
Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Economist is quantifying its total reach with the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Consolidated Media Report [CMR]—the publisher has not only volunteered to have its global digital and print circulation of 1.5 million analyzed, but will use the CMR to also evaluate its reach across newsletters, Web browsers and social accounts. The weekly news magazine is just the third brand to do so, with Bonnier’s Popular Science being the first and Taunton Press’ Fine Cooking following behind.

“We are out talking with marketers and advertising agencies and there has been, for sometime, quite a strong push back from them about why there is no data or auditing of these numbers,” Paul Rossi, managing director and executive vice president of The Economist Group, Americas, tells AD in a telephone interview. “We felt that they were right and that actually there was nothing to hide.”

The unveiling of these auditing figures, Rossi says, represents a higher-level conversation about the value of digital, social media and the Web.

“Suddenly we’re seen as someone who’s moving towards helping to solve some of the problems rather than ignoring them,” he says.

One of the difficulties associated with revealing this data, Rossi says, is quantifying audience crossover between various channels now that each vertical has been audited.

“There’s very little technology to answer the question [of audience crossover],” says Rossi. “We have done some research with asking readers—what we’ve found is there is some overlap between print and online. About 30 percent of our online audience are also print readers, and it’s a similar number with digital. You have some overlap that you can measure by asking customers, but the interesting thing to us is that in most cases it’s additive.”

Now that the publisher has grown an audience of size across several platforms, leveraging and understanding their consumers in multiple capacities will be the brand’s next steps.

“We look at the new customers who subscribe to digital editions and they, on the whole, are new to The Economist,” says Rossi. “A lot of our Facebook followers are new to The Economist and the same with Twitter. We see all of this as additive in building our audience and building engagement—bringing new people to The Economist, but also getting people that have a relationship with us to have a deeper engagement.”

This type of report, Rossi acknowledges, will help media companies show advertising partners the value that extends beyond a hard copy.

“It helps us to explain the value of digital advertising, which has been what I call print-plus—it’s print, but only better,” he says. “I think the more we can help advertisers understand that through data and transparency, the better we’ll be down the road. My view is it’s a first step, one that I encourage other publishers to take.”

The Economist’s Consolidated Media Report Shows:

• Print & Digital Circulation: 893,208

• Economist App Total Unique Devices: 255,425

• Average Digital Subscription Price: $105.11

• Total Page Views for The Economist Online: 14,914,663

• Total Monthly Unique Browsers: 3,592,114

• E-Newsletter Net Distributions: 16,407,019

• Social Media Interactions For:

o Facebook: 1,009,815

o Twitter: 2,279,796

o Google+: 502,118

o Tumblr: 43,007

o LinkedIn: 23,003