Australian Audit Bureau Boss Towell Steps Down

In Australia Gordon Towell, CEO of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and Circulations Audit Board (CAB) is returning to private enterprise after two years in the role. His replacement, from 27th August, will be ABC and CAB's Director of Audit Services, Paul Dovas.

During his tenure, the organisations have rebranded under the umbrella of ABA (Audit Bureaux of Australia), and a new Web Audit Service has been launched with an audit metrics group, the Digital Watchdog Committee, refocusing the organisations to include digital media rather than just print. CAB's Rules, By-Laws and Reporting Standards have been re-written and online data and publisher audit lodgement systems introduced. Gordon has also been a participant, on behalf of the ABA, in the international auditing community, serving on the IFABC 's Executive Committee since November 2008.

He will now take up the role of Chief Executive of Global Procurement Services.

ABC Chairman Dr Stephen Hollings says Towell has made a 'tremendous and positive impact, modernising and rebranding the ABC, re-establishing its role in the digital arena and updating its data collection and delivery mechanisms.' CAB President Rob Yeomans adds: 'Gordon's drive for excellence has seen the CAB achieve many milestones over the last two years and increased our profile and relevance.'

Dovas was appointed Director of Audit Services of the ABC and CAB in September 2008, having previously served as a consultant to the industry bodies on matters digital.

Of the new appointment, Hollings says: 'I am delighted that Paul Dovas has accepted the role of CEO and know that with his leadership the bureau will continue to increase its relevance and service to the media industry.'


Also today, the ABA announced that its campaign for measurement reform is gathering pace, with 'an increasing number of online publishers' aligning their web traffic measurement practices to comply with the ABA audit process. The main thrust of the campaign is to remove publisher-generated traffic - page views and visit time added by processes run by the publisher themselves which are of no use to advertisers but can massively inflate overall site stats.

Paul Elliott, Head of Digital at agency OMD, says his firm fully supports the ABA's efforts to provide agencies with 'numbers they can trust', and adds: 'We're beginning to implement policies to give preferential consideration to those publishers who provide complete transparency, so we encourage all publishers to be audited by the ABA.'

According to Dovas: 'Accurate measurement goes beyond the use of tracking tags; it requires independent 3rd-party scrutiny to ensure that the tags are implemented correctly and consistently in accordance with industry agreed rules and guidelines. As a non-profit industry body, the ABA, through its tripartite membership covering a mix of advertisers, agencies and publishers is best placed to cut through the clutter stemming from the horde of measurement solutions and publisher claims.'

The Bureau is online at www.auditbureau.org.au .