Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. newspaper industry's Audit Bureau of Circulations said it will change the way it counts paid circulation to provide marketers with more useful information.
New reporting standards will count newspapers sold at any price and create a separate category for copies distributed at hotels and purchased by businesses, Schaumburg, Illinois-based ABC said today in a statement. Future audits will also specify whether a newspaper is sold at a newsstand or through home delivery.
The changes, to be introduced over the next three years, come a week after the ABC combined online readership with print circulation to create a measurement called ``net combined audience.'' ABC used the new method of counting readers to show advertisers that audiences extend beyond printed editions.
Print circulation at 609 daily newspapers dropped 2.6 percent to 40.7 million in the six months through September when compared with the same period a year earlier, ABC said last week. Of those, 163 newspaper Web sites logged a total 164 million visitors monthly, ABC said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Leon Lazaroff in New York at llazaroff@bloomberg.net .
