New BPA Worldwide rules approved for business and consumer publications

BPA Worldwide, the circulation auditing agency, has announced some new rules that will apply to business and consumer publications and which were approved at its December 2016 meeting.

• All  members may choose which issue they wish to have analyzed for the reporting period, but then must not change it for 36 months;
• Web traffic metrics are being tweaked, effective June 2017:
• Page Impressions will change to Page Views
• Unique Browsers will change to Users
• User Sessions will change to Sessions 
• Average session duration reporting is mandatory
• Copies accessed or downloaded through 3rd party distribution companies shall be reported as “multi-title digital subscriptions.” Only unique recipients/users may be reported for each issue, multiple accesses or downloads of an issue by the same user shall be reported as one circulation unit.
• BPA rules require subscribers receive an alert from the publisher when their digital issue is available for download or viewing. The Board clarified the current rule to require a digital alert (email or mobile push notifications) be sent to the subscriber. Publications with a daily frequency do not require a digital alert.