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Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK)

British non-profit organisation

Summary

British non-profit organisation

Field	Value
name	Audit Bureau of Circulations
logo	Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK) logo.svg
logo_size	100px
founded_date	14 October 1931
founder	ISBA (Society of British Advertisers)
focus	Newspaper and magazine circulation
homepage

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is a non-profit organisation owned and developed by the media industry. ABC delivers industry-agreed standards for media brand measurement of print publications, digital channels and events. The company also verifies data, processes and good practice to these and other industry-agreed standards (such as those set by JICWEBS).

Established in 1931 by the Society of British Advertisers (an organisation which later became ISBA), ABC is a founder member of the International Federation of ABCs and was the first UK Joint Industry Currency (JIC) for the media industry. JICs are owned by the industry to provide transparent and independent audience measurement for each medium.

In May 2020, the board of the ABC voted to allow national newspaper publishers the option to 'opt out' of reporting their circulation figures publicly.

Board

ABC is governed by a board consisting of advertisers, media agencies, media owners and trade bodies. They represent the differing interests of the media industry, agree new standards and make strategic decisions as to how ABC is run.

Reporting Standards Group

ABC has Reporting Standards Groups (RSGs) responsible for setting reporting standards for media products across each of the following sectors: national, regional, consumer, business, bulk distribution and Republic of Ireland.

RSGs include representatives from media owners, media buyers and trade associations and typically meet three times a year. Changes to the Reporting Standards are generally agreed by consensus.

Chairman

Andrew Hirsch became chair of the Organization in August 2025. He replaced Derek Morris who was announced as ABC UK's new chairman in October 2016 and took up the position in December of that year. He replaced Sally Cartwright who had chaired the board since 2010.

Chief Executive

Simon Redlich has been the permanent CEO of ABC UK since 25 November 2016. He was previously announced as the interim CEO in January 2016, replacing Jerry Wright who stepped down from the role after more than seven years.

Activities

;Media brand measurement As a JIC, ABC creates census based trading standards to accurately reflect media activity across print and digital platforms. It then provides independent verification of media owner data to these standards. This data and related information is shown on the media owner's ABC Certificate and can also be viewed and sorted using digital tables. All visitors to the ABC website can search for and download a current certificate. This transparency and availability of data helps to facilitate the buying and selling of advertising space.

;Verification service ABC is an independent verification provider for other media industry organisations including JICWEBS, the EDAA and Counter for example. ABC's role is to check that media companies are meeting the standards set by these other organisations.

;Reporting ABC publishes a range of data reports across a number of industry sectors.

References

(26 September 2017). "JICWEBS Certification". JICWEBS.
"About Us". ISBA.
"About Us". IFABC.
(1 October 2018). "A Matter of Fact".
(21 May 2020). "ABC introduces new reporting options for newsbrands".
. (2 July 2025). ["ABC Appoints New Chair"](https://www.abc.org.uk/news/general/abc-appoints-new-chair). *Audit Bureau of Circulations (Press release)*.
(27 October 2016). "ABC announces new Chairman designate". Research Live.
(25 November 2016). "Permanent CEO for ABC announced".
Degun, Gurjit. (2 December 2015). "Simon Redlich to become interim ABC Chief Executive". [[Campaign (magazine).
Sutcliffe, Chris. (8 September 2017). "How do you measure a paper publisher's true digital value?". [[The New European]].
(12 August 2016). "Consumer ABCs: Industry analysis". The Media Leader.
Tan, Emily. (26 September 2017). "Jicwebs introduce anti-fraud certification". [[Campaign (magazine).

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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