The humble door-drop has received a major shot in the arm with the launch of new scheme from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), which for the first time certifies the quality as well as the quantity of a household distribution audience.
Using a two-stage process, ABC will verify the level of distribution to households and also report on the likelihood of those households to meet a set of defined targeting criteria using third party geodemographic segmentation tools such as TGI, Mosaic or Acorn.
The scheme has been designed to woo both advertisers and agencies interested in effectively targeting a specific profile type through free media.
ABC’s certification will help them to identify those titles best suited to delivering the audiences they want and give greater confidence and trust in using household distribution as an effective advertising channel.
Media owners can now demonstrate to their advertisers that their selected audience has been independently verified to ABC industry standards.
The new ABC standards have been developed not just for door-drops, however, with free magazines and newspapers also included, and are therefore open to any media owner planning to use household distribution.
Whistl Doordrop Media managing director Mark Davies welcomed the move, adding the scheme “recognises our channel’s ability to accurately target and deliver new products to valuable audiences without the circulation constraints of the newsstand”.
Meanwhile MC&C chief executive Mike Colling added: “From an agency perspective, I welcome this move by ABC to establish an industry standard on the planning methodologies and data sources used to reach different audiences at a household level. This will bring door-drop media into the fold of gold standard media auditing.”
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