Bauer Media has made the decision to ditch its AMAA circulation reports, and instead sign on to Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (emma)’s readership data, in addition to the existing readership data it receives to from Roy Morgan.

It comes off the back of a decline in circulation figures of late, and the closure of a number of magazines including the iconic youth title, Dolly, in recent weeks.

Bauer CEO Nick Chan said, “In an increasingly competitive media market we have to focus on the total audience delivery of our brands, rather than a measure which is based only on copy sales.

“This will make our magazines more competitive with other main media such as television, radio and OOH, which is already traded based on the size of audiences.

“The AMAA is a highly effective organisation, but circulation audits do not properly represent how consumers are interacting with our brands across different platforms, nor do they reflect the integrated media discussions we are having with our advertising clients.

“Connected audiences across multi-media channels is where we see the future of magazine brands in Australia.”

But the disparity between the figures from the AMAA and emma data is worth noting with emma often telling a different story to that of the AMAA industry circulation figures.

For context, in October’s monthly emma data, Bauer’s Cosmo snagged an average 344,000 readership per issue, while recently-closed Dolly was 169,000.

The AMAA survey ending June 2016, however, revealed that Cosmo dropped to a circulation of just over 45,000, with Dolly also falling by 26 per cent to 30,010 year-on-year.