Dow Jones to report subscription data audited by accounting firm

Dow Jones & Co. released Thursday global sales and subscription figures for its financial news publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Financial News and MarketWatch.com.

Independently assured by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP UK, these figures capture the company’s global audience and will provide a clear and consistent measure for its digital business.

Dow Jones will continue its membership and activity in third-party circulation audit agencies but will no longer report digital circulation in the U.S. via the Alliance for Audited Media. The Journal and Barron’s will continue to report print circulation via AAM.

“We are a global business and need a new, transparent, best-in-class measurement to report on our performance. This is the Global Sales & Subscriptions picture for Dow Jones, the foundation and core of our business,” said Katie Vanneck-Smith, chief customer officer for Dow Jones, in a statement. “It has never been more important where you get the news, and the affinity and loyalty of a subscriber audience is equally critical to our continued success.”

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2014, Dow Jones reported 2.655 million global sales, defined as subscriptions as well as categories such as single copy sales and copies purchased by hotels for distribution to guests.

This figure includes 2.169 million global sales for The Journal, of which 702,000 are digital-only. For The Journal, the figures comprise consumer and corporate sales to the core print and digital products. In July, Dow Jones CEO William Lewis said the subscription goal for The Journal was 3 million globally.

At the end of the first quarter of 2012, The Journal had 2.12 million subscribers.

Barron’s magazine generated 419,000 global sales for the quarter. Subscriptions to Factiva, which provides 1.1 million users access to Journal content, are not included in the figures.

Click here to review the complete report (See: Global Sales and Subscriptions). Dow Jones will report global sales and subscriptions quarterly, each time with independent assurance by PwC.

More broadly, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network of sites generated a monthly average of 479.4 million page views and 133.3 million visits during the past 12 months, according to Adobe Omniture.

The Wall Street Journal in September launched WSJ+, a subscriber membership program initially available to U.S. subscribers, which will launch globally next year.