The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has approached the Union government with a proposal to bring digital measurement into its audit framework, according to a report by exchange4media. Newly elected ABC chairman Mohit Jain told the publication that a proposal has been submitted to the government seeking digital news measurement across the board.
Jain explained the rationale, noting that digital circulation and audience figures have become increasingly important to the audit framework. The government is a key ABC customer and is itself engaged in the conversation, Jain said, adding audits should extend to digital audiences as well. However, he also cautioned that rolling out such a system would not happen overnight, given bureaucratic involvement and the complexity of the exercise, the website reported.
According to the e4m report, this development is significant because India’s print measurement ecosystem is separately trying to close the gap between print and digital. The Media Research Users Council India (MRUCI), for instance, has been working to revive the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), dormant since 2019, with a pilot that is expected to cover both print and digital readership.
ABC functions as a circulation currency — tracking how many copies a publication distributes — while IRS is a readership currency, estimating actual consumption. These have traditionally served separate functions, but both institutions are now grappling with the same underlying question of how to measure total audiences across platforms.
This isn’t new territory for ABC. The article recalls that the bureau had already attempted this with ABC Digital in 2016, using Nielsen to measure PC and mobile audiences as a complement to print.
On the readership survey side, the last IRS edition came out in 2019, with repeated delays since then over funding, methodology, research partners and survey scope.
The IRS survey itself is described as substantial: jointly published by MRUC and the Readership Studies Council of India, it is the world’s largest continuous study, sampling over 2.56 lakh respondents and covering more than 100 product categories.
