I think the time has come for newspapers to abandon the ABC.

I don't currently see any other way that we can fight back against the power of the free market in metrics that exists online. Our metric - provided by the ABC, measuring the copies in circulation - is static, consistent, inflexible and old fashioned based as it is on sales or proven delivery. Theirs - page impressions, unique users, provided by a number of competing firms - has bigger numbers despite actually being smaller, changes when the content producers want it to, is inconsistent from one metrics supplier to another, and adapts as consumer habits change.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Web ad departments are masterful at creating numbers that make them look good and of propagandising them internally and externally. And if technology changes to make the numbers look less good, they work with the metric companies to change the metric. Brilliant.

Here's a good example. Thanks to my friend Eriq at streetrodding.com (the guy sniffs ink and motor oil) I came across this piece about Nielsen deciding to measure the amount of time spent on a site rather than mere page impressions. AJAX technology takes activity away from servers? No problem, we'll change the metric to something that reflects that. Video is popular but it only registers a single page impression? Fine, lets measure the time spent watching the video and use it to demonstrate "engagement".

The Nielsen change is actually a sensible one, aimed at reflecting how people use websites in the face of changing technology. My beef on this isn't that the number is fake, it's that we newspapers are so poor at moving on like this. We are hypnotised by ABC numbers in a way that is starting to restrict our ability to compete.

Don't get me wrong, ABC is a legitimate measurement, thoroughly reliable and accepted by all. But that, in many ways, is its problem.

One of the big lessons of the growth of the internet so far has been that centralized dependable information is nothing like as valuable as it once was.  The opinions of many, the wisdom of crowds, the explosion of choice among many sources for information, the free market in credibility and opinion, is at the heart of the web's growth. ABC on the other hand is centralized and reliable and designed for an era when it was the only way we could expose our data to any kind of scrutiny.  That's just not true any more.

The ABC's strength of the past is its weakness now. The rules have changed, the competition has changed. The ABC and how it projects our reach hasn't.

Another problem is that the single metric we use forces us to think about one target only. We try to convince advertisers about readership or market penetration but internally we really only care about our ABC. The people who watch us only care about our ABC too, and so therefore do our ad customers.

That means our business is geared to adding ABC qualified sales and there is little motivation to innovate around anything that doesn't add sales. The ABC's culture tends to  restrict any kind of distribution innovation. I'll give you an example.  The ABC's growling over multiple copies makes such distributions suspicious in the minds of the same advertisers and commentators who are happy to drool about the "reach" of the internet. So our own metric ends up hampering us against online, where reach is celebrated and whether someone paid money to read something or not is irrelevant.

When I was at the Observer a large portion of our multiples went to airlines for in-flight use. They were probably the most thoroughly read copies of the paper we had. But the ABC rules make us separate them from everything else like they were somehow shameful or less valuable. Our ABC certificate didn't give us much of a way to make that point.

I think the restriction on innovation that ABC causes is real everywhere, but I think it's particularly pernicious in the US. Part of the reason UK newspapers are more bold and colorful is that at least there it is possible to see the results of efforts to lift sales on any given day. If you obtain (or buy in) a good story, it can have an impact on that day's sales and therefore on an ABC number. But in the subscription-dominated US, the sale of a title was probably made on the phone several months ago and the uplift from single copy sales is limited by restricted supply. So the "sales" team focus on what works for ABC purposes ie subscription sales: a high volume of sales calls, a good CRM system and a very low price.

Contrast that with the online world. For internet sites, every good idea they have can translate to some improvement in their metrics. A great story that gets linked to by one of the key aggregators or opinion leaders has an immediate impact. And the online media owners are proactive about insisting on a change in metrics if new technology or new habits make the existing metrics stall. It allows them to cash in quickly on the adaptiveness of their medium and it gives them the incentive to keep adapting and responding to individual consumers.

Meanwhile we don't innnovate in print (a new modern print plant? a flexible product? a new niche product?) as much as we should because it's hard to see any short-term benefit to our beloved ABCs and it involves major capital outlay. The hurdle for newspaper investment is always therefore very high.

What would a world without ABC numbers look like? At first it would be a very dangerous place. It would require more work and thought by advertisers and agencies at the start and that's not usually good. But most of our core advertisers know what they're buying, and are happy buying it now. Unless they currently believe the ABC is fake there isn't any reason to imagine they will desert overnight. I don't believe we should stop producing a circulation number measured under existing rules, I just don't think it should have the portentous seal of the ABC on it. Let's get the data online for all to see, with supporting documents. Let's make the case for our multiple copies there. Let's track our other data there too. But please let's try to wean our customers off ABC over time.

The other thing ABC does is segment our industry in an irrelevant way. We as an industry may have a keen sense of the social rank of daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, free newspapers, paid fors, shoppers, alternative weeklies. But actually none of our consumers care as much as we do. Our advertisers don't buy an advert they buy the attention of a potential customer. Is attention dependent on frequency or cover price or size of staff? I don't believe it matters to them and therefore in a battle to strengthen our media's postion and reputation against other media it shouldn't matter to us.

Our readers don't care about ABC. My guess is that they like newspapers as a medium for a variety of reasons and they like some more than others. They want a convenient portable easy-to-handle reliable source of locally and nationally important information selected by professionals. If they have to pay to get what they want they will, if they don't they don't. They have certain expectations of content from certain formats but its our medium that's needs to compete better as much as any individual part of it. Yet we don't really measure newspapers as a whole. Why? Because the ABC rules are different. And there's the problem?

The ABC has served a valuable purpose in the history of our industry, giving us a reliable metric with which to compete in the past against various other traditional media and keeping that metric credible. But it measures something that the world has moved on from and in a way that the internet has rendered irrelevant. Nowadays we could very easily open our sales data up in a standard way to the public to check for themselves online, or appoint an advertisers ombudsman to address any queries over all our metrics claims.

Life will get easier as Nielsen or another metrics company comes along and helps us offer other data.  Page impressions (pages read for newspapers) would be interesting. Time spent with newspapers would be another. Ad recall or direct purchases made would help our customers. These are all things that many newspapers already know about but use sparingly if at all.

I want two things from the new metrics: something that allows a more direct comparison with our biggest new competitor, the internet, and secondly something that reflects our superior reach and engagement in our market.   Our world doesn't require accurate measurement of sales and circulation any more, it requires comparable data.   But we won't get anyone to start listening to comparative data until we've stopped our own relentless focus on ABCs.