As usual, I can't make any sense of the National Readership Survey (NRS) figures that were released this morning. Reasons for extreme scepticism: the Daily Telegraph has been struggling to maintain its sale, yet the NRS asks us to believe that it added 11% more readers in the final six months of last year; The Guardian lost 1.5% of its sale between July and December 2006 compared to the same six months the year before and yet NRS records a 10% rise in readership; the Independent on Sunday enjoyed a 2.45% increase in sale over six months but NRS credits it with a 10% gain in readers.
Of course, these are only estimates based on surveys - producing what is called AIR, average issue readership - and they are, naturally enough, liable to sampling variations. The margin of error involved means that we have to treat the results very cautiously indeed. Anyway, having given that health warning, what else do we discover from the NRS release?
Three big losers over the course of last year were the Daily Express (down 13%), the Daily Star (-12%) and the Daily Mirror (-7%). These losses do accord with the circulation statistics audited by ABC. Altogether less believable is the claim that the Sunday Times added 1% to its readership while losing almost 5% of its sale.
I'm going to stop here. Every time I look another glaring anomaly is revealed. Trying to make sense of the NRS's data is like wrestling with jelly. But the worrying truth is that these figures form the "currency" which many media buyers use to place advertising. Doubtless, and hopefully, they also consult the hard sales figures produced by ABC.
It is also a stark reminder of the difficulties we will face in future when it comes to calculating online use in the industry. It is impossible to record circulation-style "hard" data so we will have to rely on sampling to reveal which websites are being viewed most often.
More jelly, I fear.
