Audit Watch - July 2007

Asia Pacific members of the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations (IFABC) met recently to attend the APABC meeting.

Administrator for Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) Singapore, Eddy Quek was there and told Marketing that a major part of the two day meeting centred on how the Asia Pacific ABCs can pull resources to respond to the need for audit of electronic and digital media.

"The two key conditions to IFABC membership are tripartite representation (Advertisers, ad agencies and media owners) and not-for-profit," he said.

According to the IFABC, its guiding principle for each member is self regulation, based on the conviction that whenever an industry is able to regulate itself with fairness to all concerned, control by government is unnecessary.

"It is great that more magazines in Singapore are being audited but there still needs to be more disclosure of the audit figures. In Singapore the public can only see a total audit figure and not the breakdown of how many are paid for versus how many are given away," Tim Charlton, publisher at Charlton Media Group said.

"As the highest paid circulating business magazine in Singapore, Singapore Business Review (a Charlton Media Group publication) would like to be able to view the full paid circulation figures for other magazines to make comparisons easier for advertisers. After all if a lot of customers are paying for a magazine at the newsstand it is a good indication that it is highly read too," he said.