Measurement of Readership

We help publishers distributing newspaper, magazine and online content to understand the size, composition and flow of readers between and amongst different titles and platforms. This data feeds into decisions on how best to maximise audiences with compelling content and how to promote specific content to high value readers. In addition, the data is used for trading advertising inventory between media companies and media agencies buying on behalf of marketers.

Ipsos employs a range of methods to measure newspaper and magazine audiences in over 40 countries worldwide – more than any other company. We generally recruit representative samples of adults (via face-to-face or telephone methods) and ask them to take part in 25-35-minute surveys about their reading behaviour across and between titles and platforms.

For titles with audiences too small to capture using national surveys, Ipsos has developed a unique modelling approach built around circulation and census data, alongside other inputs. This enables robust estimates to be made of audiences for even the smallest newspapers.

To collect information on total readership of a publisher brand (i.e. including print, online and mobile audiences) we developed an innovative approach for a client in the UK. This involved asking survey respondents to install software onto the devices they use to access newspaper and magazine content after they had completed the standard readership interviews. This enabled us to identify when and how often our respondents access publisher websites or apps, while also knowing in advance which printed titles they had claimed to read. By understanding the duplication of audiences between platforms, we were able to project to the whole population. Again, this approach is now available for application in other countries.

Readership surveys are still carried out using predominantly face-to-face, probability-based methods, offering high quality data, but often at considerable cost. Ipsos is working to moderate the cost of studies by testing online data collection methods and even online panel-based recruitment and data collection. In addition, working with other media measurement systems is being looked at in several countries.