As the industry welcomes its new audience measurement currency, the chief executives of Newsworks and Magnetic tell us why PAMCo is a game-changer.

It goes without saying that newspapers and magazines are no longer just printed products – whether it’s a digital edition of Tatler or The Guardian’s breaking news updates on your home screen, publishers’ cross platform presence is dynamic, diverse and, for many of us, an essential part of our daily routine.

So what’s new, we hear you ask? Well, in a word: PAMCo. The industry’s new audience measurement currency means that, for the first time, we can get a cross platform, de-duplicated view of how people are consuming published media on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. To put it simply, the data now reflects the reality of how we are consuming newspapers and magazines.

This currency is not only the first of its kind, but its robustness is unparalleled. It uses the very latest passive measurement techniques, together with 35,000 high-quality, face-to-face interviews, to unlock the huge audiences consuming publisher content across platforms.

Not only this, but it has the capacity and flexibility to respond to the evolution of new titles and platforms – future-proofing it when it comes to digital developments and changing consumer habits.

Just think about that for a minute. Newspaper and magazine publishers have come together to create the most innovative, holistic and transparent audience measurement survey available. At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s no small feat and bears even more significance at a time when data use is under increased scrutiny and the likes of Facebook are – to put it nicely – providing advertisers with highly questionable measurement.

In addition, PAMCo allows for a brand-first breakdown. From supplements to brand extensions, the data incorporates all of a brand’s products at a cross platform level. For the first time, we know exactly who is consuming what across a brand’s portfolio, as well as having a total brand reach for each title.

This level of rich insight not only simplifies our understanding of publisher brands’ presence, but once and for all puts a pin in the staid, old thinking of published media as printed products. There is no excuse for siloed or platform-centric perceptions now.

Perhaps most importantly, it also opens the door for potential changes to trading and the creation of compelling cross platform, audience-first ad packages. With their high quality content and trusted brand credentials, publishers are well-placed to deliver for advertisers. Just take a closer look at the headline figures:

What PAMCo means for newsbrands

The new data shows us that 24.6 million people are reading newsbrands every day, rising to 41.3 million every week. It’s interesting to note that this weekly figure is not far off the monthly total (45.4 million), revealing that the majority of readers are consistent and engaged consumers of newsbrands.

With half of the British public (26.6 million) accessing newsbrands on their smartphones and tablets every week, the data also shows that digital platforms provide an 88% uplift to print on a daily basis. Meanwhile, when it comes to young people, a hefty 82% of 18-34s access newsbrand content every week.

These figures show the scale of newsbrands’ cross platform reach – and don’t forget that those consuming newsbrands are actively engaging with the content. It’s pretty hard to multi-task when reading and we know from our own research with the AOPthat the quality context newsbrands provide boosts readers’ long-term memory encoding, engagement and emotional response.

Going forward, the new currency will enable agencies and brands to work with newsbrands in new and exciting ways, safe in the knowledge that the audience currency is both transparent and trustworthy, much like the advertising environment of our publisher brands.

What PAMCo means for magazines

Until last week, magazines have only had cross platform data together in one measurement system for 14 brands. With PAMCo, we are now able to see how over 146 magazine brands perform at a total brand reach level, 70 of which are shown for print, desktop, tablet and mobile.

This means that, for the first time, the additional digital reach of over 11.5 million adults consuming magazine brands has been captured in one place, making the planning of these highly valuable engaged audiences possible.

Importantly, 72% of 15-34 year olds are engaging with a magazine brand each month, putting to bed the narrative that younger audiences don’t consume magazines.

This is great news for the power magazine brands such as Cosmopolitan, Vogueand the Radio Times whose total monthly brand reach figures stand at 3.3 million, 2 million and 8.1 million respectively, but it is also extremely important for some of the smaller, yet growing brands in the sector.

A quick glance at the data shows that a brand like Motor Cycle News, with a solid and loyal monthly print readership of 463,000, has almost double the brand reach when its various digital channels are captured. In film, Empire moves from print readership of 528,000 to total brand reach of 964,000; in homes, Living etc. reaches 177,000 readers monthly in print, yet has a total brand reach of 906,000; in motoring, Evo shows 137,000 in print, yet over half a million across all channels.

The new engagement data, which is also captured in PAMCo, perhaps gives the colour to this emerging story of a thriving, diverse sector with robust print readers moving to other channels. 88% of adults indicate that reading a magazine is time well spent; 68% believe they offer content that can’t be found elsewhere and 80% trust what they read.

In a world of free and supposedly homogenous content, there seems to be a very clear and distinct role for magazine brands and published media with its highly differentiated and valued offer to play.

What next?

To put it simply, PAMCo is a game-changing development for the industry – now is the time to harness the power of published media.

As media commentator Ray Snoddy wrote last week, the launch of the new data should “inspire ‘a renaissance’ in sophisticated media planning”. For publishers and planners alike, there is a real opportunity to tap into the opportunities the data provides and develop new models for audience-based trading.

Utilising the data effectively is not only good for publishers and brands, but the implications for society as a whole – enabling investment in a diverse and vibrant press sector – can only be a good thing.

Find out more.

*this article first appeared on Mediatel