New audience datasets to showcase publisher engagement across channels; creating AI trust signals

As publishers continue to build deeply engaged audiences with subscriptions, events and newsletters, buyers want to reach these authenticated users across channels. Yet understanding the full scope of that engagement remains a challenge.

To address this gap, the Alliance for Audited Media is launching a clearer, more consistent way to look at audience engagement within and across channels — one that balances scale with transparency and reflects how audiences actually interact with news brands today.

A new dataset: Total unduplicated users, gross users by channel

Historically, audience reporting has focused on individual channels: website traffic, print circulation, newsletter subscribers or event attendance. While each of these metrics is useful on their own, they don’t always tell the full story.

Over the past year, we’ve discussed how to evolve media reporting with our board, working groups and members. The feedback resulted in a new dataset that introduces a unique audience metric alongside gross audience reporting by channel:

• The unique audience metric is an unduplicated count of paid subscribers and authenticated users across channels.
• Gross counts provide visibility into how audiences engage across channels including websites, newsletters, apps, events, print and more.

This data will be included in AAM’s new Cross-Channel Audience Report to give buyers a clearer understanding of total audience and engagement.

Creating AI trust signals

As artificial intelligence reshapes the media landscape, there’s an increased focus on how to distinguish trusted journalism and authenticated audiences from AI-generated content and environments.

AAM’s Ethical AI Certification helps companies establish, implement and communicate their responsible AI governance. An Ethical AI Certification from AAM elevates trust, transparency and confidence for audiences, advertisers and partners.

A step toward a broader vision

These developments are important steps toward AAM’s mission of fostering a media ecosystem built on trust, transparency and accountability. We are taking other steps as well. AAM formed a new Buyer Steering Committee with representatives from major agencies, advertisers and industry organizations to discuss emerging areas that need transparency and compliance to drive the industry forward. AAM’s board of directors now includes representation from the Association of National Advertisers with Jackson Bazley, EVP, Measurement for Marketers, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau with Angelina Eng, VP, Measurement and Attribution.

The Alliance for Audited Media will continue working with publishers, buyers and industry partners to refine approaches that support clarity, comparability and confidence in audience measurement across channels. Sign up to receive AAM updates, industry news and insights at auditedmedia.com.