Some of Australia’s leading media buyers have given their backing to The Newspaper Works’ EMMA (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia), stating that it’s an upgrade on the existing industry readership metric provided by Roy Morgan.

The first set of the new EMMA readership data has been released today, showing up to 80% difference from the established Roy Morgan numbers for some titles.

Mat Baxter (pictured), chief executive at Mediabrands-owned UM, said his agency is putting its full support behind EMMA, and will be using EMMA data in its media operations instead of the figures from Roy Morgan.

Commenting on the sizable percentage difference between the two sets of data, Baxter believes that this was always going to be the case "because EMMA has got a more robust and more recent methodology attached to it”.

"You’re asking people that have a stronger likelihood of recalling what they’d been reading given that you’re asking them on a more frequent basis, so I think there was an expectation that the flip in methodology would garner slightly better results for media than Roy Morgan, which requires a longer period of recall and is done using a more cumbersome, longer format methodology,” said Baxter.

He added that UM sees EMMA as an enhancement on Roy Morgan with superior methodology, inclusing a range of different benefits such as data from across the different channels and sectional readership. “It’s a more in-dept analysis of media consumption. We will be putting our full weight behind EMMA," he said.

Baxter said that Roy Morgan is now in a spot of bother given that it has “failed to respond to the needs of the market place”.

“They haven’t addressed some of the shortfalls that the market has asked for, things like multi-platform and sectional readership.

“Agencies won’t be able to afford to subscribe to the two surveys. One is going to have to be sacrificed in favour of the other. From our point of view, the expectation is that EMMA will reign supreme in that battle."

UM looks after media duties for News Limited, which has already given a ringing endorsement to EMMA.

Meanwhile, MEC's chief executive Peter Vogel has also welcomed the arrival of EMMA, stating that print publishers are eager to get aggregated readership stats from across all platforms.

"They want these aggregated stats so it makes their medium more competitive," he said. "The other big thing is they [EMMA] give out sectional readerships, so if you’re looking at the mastheads breakdown, then it’s absolutely great because it gives you more detail. Print is fighting a very difficult battle so anything that can help them they'll have to do."