BPA Board announces rule changes in December

BPA Board announces rule changes at December meeting

At its meeting in New York City December 13, 2007, the BPA Worldwide Board of Directors approved a number of amendments to existing rules for business publications and consumer magazines.

Below is a summary of new rules and amendments, including an update of BPA’s telecommunication recording initiative requirements; digital edition e-mail alerts; and additions and removals for medical publications.

Board Actions Applying to Both Business Publications and Consumer Magazines:

Exception to telecommunication recording initiative: After the initial passage of BPA’s telecommunication recording initiative (effective January 1, 2008) in December 2005, publishers began testing the rule to determine what, if any, challenges might arise. In some cases, publishers encountered subscribers who, while otherwise qualified, refused to be recorded. In response to this industry-wide feedback, the Board voted to allow publishers to offer personal identification questions for those qualified subscribers who refuse to be recorded. For subscriptions to individuals who refuse to be recorded and remain as qualified circulation, the following conditions must be met:

A question approximating the following must be asked and answered during the telephone interview: "Do you wish to receive (continue to receive) this publication? (Yes/No). A personal identifying question must be asked and answered. Some examples…”To permit future verification or your request, please give us your month and/or date of birth, mother's maiden name or high school graduated from." Once a particular question is used and the answer stored, a different question must be used for future request questions.

Digital edition e-mail alert opt-out: BPA’s rules for digital editions require a subscriber to opt in to receive an electronic version to be counted as qualified circulation. Those subscribers who opt to receive a digital version receive e-mail alerts each time an issue is available to download. The BPA Board amended its rule to permit publications with less than daily frequency to provide subscribers with a customer service opportunity to opt out of receiving the e-mail alert upon receiving the first alert. However, the rule amendment also stipulates that those publishers that choose to offer the opt-out from the e-mail alert, must also provide a separate opt-out to discontinue receiving the magazine.

Personal requests made by authorized assistants: An amendment was approved to merge the two current “authorized assistant request” questions into a single compound question. A qualified subscriber’s authorized assistant may request the publication on behalf of the qualified recipient and be reported as personal telecommunication request, provided the assistant responds affirmatively to either one of the questions below:

Do you provide administrative support for (subscriber’s name) that includes the ability to request subscriptions for him/her?”

Do you provide administrative services for (subscriber’s name) and are you (allowed/eligible/permitted) to request a publication on their behalf?”

Previously, the rule required confirmation that an authorized provided administration and was empowered to request a publication on behalf on the subscriber.

Publications with three sequential audit reports with same error/adjustments require pre-audit: The Board amended the existing rule that stated publishers are required to pre-audit any publication that has three years of sequential audit reports. The updated rule requires a pre-audit only when a publication has three years of errors or omissions that require adjustment to the same BPA statement paragraph.

Allowance of demographic data older than three years: BPA rules require that all demographic reported on a statement can be no older than three years from the date of the issue analyzed. However, the BPA Board ruled to accept proof of demographics that are older than three years provided the data does not change over time. For example, a publisher might have collected “medical school graduation data” more than three years ago, but since that data remains consistent, it is exempt from the three-year rule and can be reported on a BPA statement.

Digital edition site licenses require specific count: BPA reaffirmed its existing rules that allow only one copy to be reported as qualified digital circulation when served as part of a site license agreement. However, publishers may now disclose the number of authorized site licenses and the number of individuals with access served as part of each site license agreement in the “additional data” tables of BPA statements and reports.

New Middle East-North Africa reporting subset created: Citing commercial and cultural similarities in the region, geographic proximity and the general regard as one market, the Board created a new international reporting subset—Middle East-North Africa (MENA)—that will be added to the existing international breakout of circulation. The new region will consist of the existing Middle East geographic subset, as well as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.

Geographic reporting by region and country: The BPA Board amended the geographic reporting rule to require country-level reporting if the amount of circulation going into a region is between 5% and 24.9% of the total qualified circulation. Countries with more than 25% circulation must report a state/province—or other agreed-upon market—breakout of circulation using standard BPA tables (Canada, China, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States). Prior to the rule change, regions were required to break out countries if circulation was between 5% and 49.9%.

In the cases where BPA Worldwide has not published a standard table and a publication has over 25% of its circulation to any one country, and the market would benefit from a standard table, BPA will work with the publishers in the market to establish a standard table.

Board Actions Applying Only to Business Publications:

Request sources derived from medical association lists exempted from reporting additions/removals: BPA Worldwide rule B9.18 states, “those medical journals that obtain over 90% of their lists from an AMA, ADA, and AOA, franchise list houses may waive the reporting additions and removals.”

However, as more medical publishers seek the benefits of periodic class mailing in the United States, BPA has seen a shift from “association rosters and directories” to “personal direct request” sources. In response to this shift, BPA will now allow those publications developing direct request sources from medical association lists, to choose not to report additions and removals on circulation statements and audit reports. However, a footnote will be required in the explanatory “Additional Data” paragraph of BPA reports to disclose the number of records that are obtained through medical association lists, regardless of the source (i.e. list or personal direct request) and age of qualification information that is reported in Paragraph 3b.