Media owners hungry for trusted auditing in China

Earlier this month, media circulation auditor BPA Worldwide made the unusual move of terminating the membership of Business Travel, a monthly publication owned by the renowned Nanfang Daily Media Group, again bringing attention to a question that has been haunting media owners and advertisers in China for decades - the credibility of data.

According to the Danwei blog, BPA audit staff were presented with sealed boxes allegedly filled with more than 210,000 printed copies of the magazine. Upon inspection, the boxes were found to be empty. BPA only confirmed 13,360 copies were printed, while Business Travel's monthly average print claim for 2009 was 210,347.

Business Travel may have cheated in its audit, but ironically, in a market where many newspapers and magazines disseminate fake circulation data that is much higher than the true number, it is one of the very few titles that voluntarily sought an audit by an independent, third-party auditor.

Seth Grossman, managing director of Carat China, says that while there are more than 10,000 print titles on the market, only about 50 of them are being audited by BPA. Similarly, the US-based Audit Bureau of Circulation and local organisations like Kaiyuan Research and Century Chinese International Media Consultation, also only audit a small portion of publications, leaving out many of the most popular titles.

And cheating is widespread. "There is no tradition of auditing," says Lynn Wang, director of distribution at a Hong Kong-based media group that publishes several fashion titles in Beijing and Shanghai. "So people always think that there is a way to get around the auditing process."

The accuracy of auditing is also limited by the way auditors collect their data. Kaiyuan tracks sales by sending out pollsters to visit newsstands. However, it is able to monitor only a small portion of the 2,000 plus newsstands in Beijing. As a result, reliable data is limited and agencies normally do not select titles based solely on these figures, but draw on them for reference.

"We must use our experience and knowledge to guide our clients," says Grossman, "It is not due to a lack of trust of auditors, but merely due to their small universe."

In the meantime, Sandy Lai, general manager for print buying at Aegis Media China, who has more than 20 years of planning and buying experience says: "The market is hungry for comprehensive and trustworthy auditing figures, but it has a long way to go."

The only solution, as Grossman points out, lies in industry collaboration that involves both agencies and advertisers to motivate publishers to accept auditing and change the conventions of the industry.

"In a market like China, we are used to living in a world of ambiguity," Grossman says. "But as the market matures and evolves, the industry must develop the standards to police the marketplace. Transparency must become the standard, instead of the exception."

This article was originally published in the 1 July 2010 issue of Media.