On 21 January, The Readership Works will release an important innovation in Australia’s cross-platform audience insights metric, emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia).

The new emma audience data now integrates the additional consumers measured by Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) previously not included in total readership.

The October data release is the first to incorporate this data.

This new audience data will deliver consistency between industry currency data sources, improve accuracy and better reflect the total audience of publisher brands.

It also capitalises on the improvements in Nielsen DCR methodology to extend emma’s ability to deliver currency grade total audience to more magazines and news media (including regional) titles.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) accredited Nielsen DCR captures greater coverage of mobile audiences and includes content consumed via websites, apps and video players across all devices, and social platforms such as Facebook, as well as Google.

The full integration of the IAB-accredited Nielsen DCR currency into emma will be possible in the first half of 2019 with the delivery of Nielsen’s full synthetic respondent level database (SRLD).

In the interim, Nielsen has developed a solution that enables the calibration of the digital panel data to match the DCR audience data for people 14+.

This delivers an alignment of audience numbers in emma to those seen in the digital currency published in market.

The emma data provides the most accurate and complete picture available for news media and magazine audiences both on and off platform for tagged sites.

Due to considerations for maintaining sample size integrity, certain titles will not receive a Nielsen DCR calibrated digital audience number and total audience report until the implementation of Nielsen’s SRLD database later in 2019.

Until that time emma will continue to use NDP data for those titles to create their total audience reports, rather than a DCR-calibrated number.

The source of each title’s total audience will be cited accordingly to avoid any confusion as to whether the calibrated DCR figure or the NDP figure has been used.

The Readership Works general manager Mal Dale said: “With our partners at Ipsos and Nielsen, we continue to strive to deliver the world’s most innovative and accurate cross-platform audience data.

“This is the next important step in our development program and we have plenty more to come in 2019 and beyond.

“It is no coincidence that the UK recently moved to a cross-platform audience measurement system (PamCo) based on the emma framework and all other sophisticated markets have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, the approach we pioneered in Australia.”

IAB CEO Gai Le Roy said: “The IAB is delighted with the upgrade of emma to include the official endorsed ratings currency, DCR, which provides the market the most accurate audience data for digital.

“The ongoing collaboration between the IAB and The Readership Works to provide cross print and digital media measurement is a perfect example of two industry bodies working together to enhance trust and transparency in market.”

The incorporation of calibrated Nielsen DCR digital audiences means that emma’s digital methodology has changed and there will be a trend break in the data, rendering year-on-year comparisons of news media and magazines total audience invalid.

The trend break will last until October 2019.

Month-on-month comparisons can take place from November 2018 onwards.

Print remains unaffected.