BPA Worldwide Blog

Media owners take note: Christmas retail shows continued consumer shift toward online

It may not quite spell the death of retail just yet, but Christmas 2007 was undeniably an internet holiday.

Consumers in the US spent almost $28bn online during the Christmas season, up 19% on the previous year, whilst around 4.4m surfers - equivalent to one in thirteen of the UK population - purchased items online on Christmas Day itself, a year-on-year increase of 269%.  According to internet security company Retail Decisions, over the whole three-day holiday period total online spend in the UK hit an estimated £440m.

That’s great news for retailers, of course. It’s also a further indication for media owners, buyers and advertisers that, not only our media consumption, but so much of our social interaction will increasingly revolve around the online space. Shopping, social networking, entertainment and news are already internet-led activities.

However, as trading online becomes the norm, as it surely will within five years, it is essential for the credibility not only of the medium but also of those that operate in it, that the same safeguards and standards that we have applied to our offline activities are carried through to the online space.

The internet is maturing fast, despite the fact that new opportunities are unveiled literally by the day. The time when the dot-com collapse rocked our faith and led to a pull-back in investment in online seem a long time ago.

And this means that media owners, buyers and advertisers can no longer afford to conduct their business in silos. Advertisers need to make buying decisions across all media platforms and based on evidence of where potential consumers are going to source their information or buy their products. 

This focus on ROI demands that online embraces the same level of independently verified, in-depth data as their print contemporaries. It will lead to demands for media owners to report the geographic origin of traffic to their sites, so that those who advertise globally can make informed decisions on where to place their spend; it will lead to greater scrutiny of ad serving networks, and above all, it will demand demonstrable evidence from media owners that what an advertiser pays for, it actually gets.

It’s going to be an interesting year.

Update on Distribution Agreements

Since I last posted on the subject of Distribution Agreements back in September 2006, our Board of Directors has made a few positive changes to the rules that will affect how consumer magazine publisher handle their bulk distribution.

The first step was to clarify the rule of what requires distribution agreements and what doesn’t (Rule C7.19). The original wording was that a publisher required agreements for redistribution for “more than 2 copies” in one place. That wording got confused with the duplication rule (C7.10) that also references 2 copies.

To clear things up, the Board updated the text to read that distribution agreements are only required for “3 or more” copies at a single location. But don’t forget that BPA rules still defines multi-copy same addressee copies—or “bulk”—as 2 or more copies.

The Board also amended the rule to now allow distribution agreements from corporate or centralized offices. Part of this rule change requires that each location submit an “opt-in” for the requested copies and that must be conducted at least every 36 months.

While there is no limitation on the number of copies to a location, if you send three or more, you must have an agreement with each location, or from its controlling office (i.e. headquarters), stating that they agree to receive the indicated number of copies.

See the rules for a complete reading and understanding.