The Audit Bureau of Circulations announced today its new Canadian Digital Advisory Committee, created to help the organization identify trends and business opportunities, as well as review how ABC verifies and reports on interactive and emerging media such as websites, e-readers, mobile apps, hybrid audience measurement and ad-serving operations.

The committee will be chaired by Ted Boyd, CEO and partner at 58Ninety Inc. and a member of the ABC Canada Board Committee as well as a member of the ABC's digital advisory committee in the U.S. "The digital advisory committee in the U.S. looks at many of the same issues as we have here but Canada is a unique marketplace for a number of different reasons–geographic structure, and certainly our bilingual nature," said Boyd. "Quebec is a very important part of the Canadian marketplace and requires a fundamentally different consideration than the U.S. marketplace does. A lot of the issues we debate and discuss will be similar, but how we interpret them and bring them to bear in the Canadian industry may differ."

The digital advisory committee was set up in the U.S. in 2008, but given the changes and level of member interest, the ABC decided to add an all-Canadian group, said Joan Brehl, the ABC's vice-president and general manager, brand leadership and innovation in Canada. The need for a standardized and up-to-date model of digital measurement was the primary motivator for creating the committee, said Neal Lulofs, ABC's senior VP, communications and strategic planning. "Historically, the difference between panel-only measurements and site-centric measurement has been an issue and a hindrance in the industry," he said. "So we're seeing companies like comScore take the lead in coming up with hybrid solutions, bringing those types of measurements together. It just makes the numbers more reasonable and broadens the types of websites that can be measured by comScore. Smaller websites don't have enough coverage in a panel-only measurement model. So that's one of the big trends in the market, even in the last few months."

Lulofs said the proliferation of e-readers and the recent unveiling of the iPad have increased the sense of urgency for a more standardized measurement model.

"That's at the centre of the CDAC discussion, where our publisher members are coming to us with new applications they want to deliver, to the iPhone or what they want to do with the iPad, and they want to make sure it will qualify under ABC rules and guidelines. The other side is what all that drives from the web traffic point of view and that's where the measurement model comes into play."

The committee includes:

•Brent Bernie, president, comScore Media Metrix

•David Carmichael, general manager, online operations, Rogers Business and Professional Publishing Group

•Gilad Coppersmith, managing director, digital and emerging media, OMD

•Matt Devlin, account director, communications, planning and digital, ZenithOptimedia

•Kim Machado, director and group general manager, Rogers Media–Digital, Consumer Publishing Division

•Graham Moysey, senior vice-president and general manager, Canwest Digital Media

•Angus Robinson, online product manager, Transcontinental Media

•Andrew Saunders, vice-president, advertising sales, The Globe and Mail

•Peter Vaz, vice-president, director digital communications, M2 Universal Digital

The committee held its inaugural meeting today in Toronto to discuss the different roles of panel-based audience estimates, cookie-based metrics from analytics tools and new hybrid measurement; ad operations workflow challenges on both the publisher and agency sides; the recent explosion in mobile and e-reader devices; and ABC's current and future digital reporting opportunities.