A Media Measurement Integration Task Force, which includes some of the most prominent names in the global print and digital media research community, was formed during a two-day summit in Chicago to explore the possibility of global standards for combined print and digital measurements.

Several media research firms have created combined measurements to show the advertising community and media investors the true marketplace reach for newspapers, with circulation, readership and traffic numbers for print and digital combined. However, while the measurements provide the most accurate picture of total reach into a newspaper’s print and digital distribution area than circulation alone, the numbers are not necessarily useful to advertising agencies, which don’t often plan media buys in an integrated media fashion.

Another key issue is that of global standardization and guidelines. Until now, no international group has embarked on creating a standardised, combined print and digital currency, which may be a useful measurement to ad agencies planning billions of dollars of advertising campaigns across media each year.

The Task Force created a mission statement Monday, and will embark on its first project to address these matters in the coming months.

The mission statement says: “Newspapers are in the business of collecting, aggregating and distributing news, information and entertainment, and they are moving to doing that in a platform-agnostic manner. Our role is to capture the audience and activity -- quantitatively and qualitatively -- to any of those platforms, and to enable our stakeholders to provide accountability for their portfolio.”

The first project will be to survey hundreds of media buyers worldwide about their needs for a global print and digital metric, now and in the future. The results of the survey will identify ways agencies and newspaper companies can work together more effectively in the area of newspaper advertising buying across platforms.

Agencies worldwide are seeing seismic shifts in demands from their advertising clients wanting multiple media employed in their campaigns. Some agencies are starting to respond by planning campaigns across media. But most agencies are operated in “silos” of media, and are slowly evolving into integrated media-buying operations. Buyers of single media are the norm, but they are starting to interact with media buyers in other media. Few buyers are now purchasing media across platforms.

The Task Force will again meet in June in New York to discuss proposed global newspaper and digital currency standards, the results of the survey, and a strategy to address the agency needs in cross-media measurement.

Those attending the first Media Measurement Integration Task Force meeting were Michael Lavery, president and managing director of Audit Bureau of Circulations, Chicago; Erica DeLorenzo, senior manager, industry initiatives and legal affairs, Interactive Advertising Bureau, New York; Anne Crassweller, president of NADBank, Toronto; Chris Boyd, chief executive of ABC UK & Ireland, London; Antonio Athayde, executive director of the Brazilian Newspaper Association, Brasilia, Brazil; Dick Bennett, CEO of IMServices, Chicago; Richard Foan, Managing Director of ABC Electronic, London; David Asher, senior manager of business analysis and research, Newspaper Association of America, Arlington, Va.; Gary Meo, Senior Vice President, Scarborough Research, Austin, Texas; Martha Stone, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper manager, World Association of Newspapers, Paris.

Also in attendance were two representatives from international advertising agency Draft FTB, research executive Roger Baron and media planner Sydney Caine. Baron and Caine provided insight into planning print and online campaigns, and the tools and statistics used to make media buying decisions.

For more information, contact Martha Stone, manager of Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, World Association of Newspapers, at mstone@wan.asso.fr, or + 1 847 778 9806.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 76 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr.