BPA Business Publication statement reporting amendments proposed

Here are the issues making the b-to-b circulation circuit these days. A few interesting proposals are on circulators’ minds—including consolidating data within paragraph 3b; eliminating additions and removals; and digital site licenses. BPA will be forming a tripartite task force of media owners, buyers and advertisers to study the points further. If you would like to participate in the task force initiative, please let me know. I also invite your feedback on any or all of these points.

Here are the amendments to be considered by the b-to-b task force:

·        In an effort to ease industry burden, BPA has been asked to consider consolidating “qualified within one year” and the “qualified with in two year” categories within Paragraph 3b (Qualification Source and Age). The change has been proposed to ease the workload on circulators who have seen their responsibilities increase with expanded portfolios, and to improve economics.

Questions that come to mind: Will publishers be comfortable competing with the new consolidated category? Will media buyers accept a new, consolidated 3b? Should 3-year be eliminated, limiting all circulation to within 24 months and simply report sources only?

·        We received a request from a member to eliminate the reporting of additions and removals on BPA’s business circulation statements and audit reports. (Additions and removals are not required for consumer magazines or newspapers.)

The member pointed out a number of challenges, including:

1. Additions and removals require complicated programming for fulfillment systems;

2. Advertisers do not fully understand the nature of additions and removals;

3. Publishers reporting print and digital subscribers often do not have the ability to report additions and removals correctly; issue to issue variances in paragraph 2 provide adequate disclosure of variances;

4. Additions and removals are not required to be reported for paid subscribers;

5. Medical journals do not report additions and removals;

6. Continuous service is becoming less important to the market, but it can be checked through record history in fulfillment systems rather than through additions and removals;

7. BPA staff reviews hundreds of circulation promotions from publishers each year and very few of the promotions focus on addition and removal activity.

            

·        BPA’s Board of Directors recently voted to not allow the number of people who have access to a digital site license copy to be reported as qualified circulation. Site licenses and the copies the license represent may be reported in the explanatory paragraph.

We have been asked to revisit the discussion, specifically as it relates to “paid” site license agreements.

Should people who have access to digital copy on their company’s server be counted as qualified circulation, or only those who access the copy? Is “paid” digital site license distribution more credible than non-paid digital site license distribution?

·        A rule amendment to make optional the reporting of paid circulation data (price, length of sub, incentives, how ordered) for business publications was presented and will be reviewed by the task force.

Here’s the background: Paragraphs 5 – 8 report total new and renewed qualified paid subscription orders/sold for the period. Currently, publishers are required to report these paragraphs if their average paid circulation exceeds 50%. They may also elect to report these paragraphs if their paid circulation is below 50%.

Only 134 or 7% of BPA Worldwide business publishers have over 50% average qualified paid circulation. Over half (67) of these publications are association publications that pay for the magazine through non-deductible dues and therefore exempt from the rule.

There is precedent to such a move. Several years back BPA Worldwide eliminated the mandatory reporting of renewal percentage for paid publications.

I look forward to reading your comments.  To Comment, click on the COMMENT link below, read what others have said and at the end of the comments string you will find where you can add your comments.  They will be sent to me, I will read them, answer if I can and then post them.

Comments

[Patty Fleider]

As a person involved with auditing and recommending b-to-b pubs to clients, both the adds/removals and percent 1 or 2 year qualified are both critical metrics used to evaluate publications. In today’s rapidly changing business world, it is essential to our advertising clients to have some assurance that publishers are keeping their circulations current. If BPA allows publishers to consolidate the 1 and 2 year qualified on the audit statement, who will advertisers rely on for this information---publishers? Any business list whether a customer file, a mail list or circulation file will begin to deteriorate immediately ---according to major list companies up to 70% of a given list may have some change in a course of a year. It has been our experience that business lists will atrophy at a rate of at least 1% per month. The adds/removals shows advertisers that the publisher is indeed keeping their “list” updated. While stability in circulation is critical so is adding “new” names. Adds/removals will indicate if there have been any major changes in circulation and will also tell what percent of the circulation has changed over the audit period. This information if presented and explained can actually help publishers distinguish themselves from their competitors. I agree with previous bloggers that the final decision on these tools should be made by the advertisers not publishers. Whose fault is it if media buyers and/or advertisers do not understand these fundamental metrics? We look forward to hearing what the task force recommends on these issues.

[Jim Nowakowski]

When Tony Dellamaria, the Vice President - Group Publisher of Stamats Commercial Buildings Group told me that BPA was considering this, I thought he was joking. I told him what to tell the blog, but then when my research director told me she hopped online and saw some of the people who were commenting, I decided to weigh in. I will tell you want I told Tony: combining the years would be one of the most stupid moves BPA could make, and it is obvious if they are even considering it that they are bending to pressure from the market who doesn’t understand the value of what BPA does. In considering it, I also wonder if BPA itself understands their own value premise? The one and two year and three year counts are some of the most valuable pieces of information on that report. Take that away, and you don’t have much left as a matter of fact. Is BPA itself is trying to “cut costs.”

Either way, if they do that, they would deliver a severe blow to metrics in the b-to-b arena. And that's my opinion.

BPA RESPONSE: This blog is accomplishing precisely what it was intended to accomplish. We want to cast a wider net for input on proposals submitted to us. The feed back has been very helpful and will continue to be so in shaping policy and requirements. We don't agree with every proposal we receive and its obvious that many of our members don't agree with some proposals. The process continues....thank you for your feedback.

[Mike Serino]

Dear Mr. Hansen:

Scranton Gillette Communications, Inc. has considered the proposal for committee review of combining 1-year and 2-year names into a single column in Paragraph 3b.

The purpose of Paragraph 3b is to show advertisers and their agencies the wontedness and vitality of a publication. The numbers reported in the 1-year column as Personal Direct Request is the only means a controlled publication has to prove this point.

Re-defining the aged document range also should not change. When a subscription document is processed immediately before the closing of an audit issue (the vast majority being re-qualifications), this confirms the subscriber has “Qualified Within” the past year. More likely than not the circulation department used multiple attempts during the previous 12 months to re-qualify their subscribers.

A publisher’s goal is not to make life easier for their circulation director but rather deliver the best possible audience to their advertising clients. Changing the existing rules of Paragraph 3b will definitely create an environment to prevent an apples-to-apples comparison of competing publications. It may well in fact put into question the transparency and validity of the Circulation Statement and cause confusion within the advertising buying community.

Scranton Gillette Communications, Inc. is strongly opposed to this proposal before the Audience Development Advisory Committee.

Cordially,
Ed Gillette, President, CEO

Sheldon Schultz, Vice Chairman, COO

Mike Serino, Director of Circulation

[Scott Cravens]

From the Publisher perspective, it is definitely a bad idea to combine 1 & 2 year and eliminate 3 year. These are key distinctions on a publisher statement and the media buyer deserves to see that distinction. As paid books know, the editor is also the renewal manager. If the problem is that it costs too much to renew a subscriber within 23 months (classified as 1-year) then try firing your editor, but the advertiser deserves to see the numbers.

I can see where eliminating adds and kills would be a big advantage in the audit process without losing much value for the media buyer.

You can put me on the task force if needed.

[Valerie Tickle]

Would love to see the consolidation of one and two year names so we could direct some of that money (and time) to building better audiences for our print and digital publications, our editorial and/or bottom line. Within our industries we are all marketing at the same time and chasing after the same C level people. If the one/two year dates were combined we might be able to shift to paid renewal cycles thus speading out all of our efforts and quite possibly improving all of our renewal rates.

I think we should keep three year circ. Some markets are only concerned with paragraph 3a and advertisers never make it to 3B so why penalize titles in these situations. That being said titles with very strong 1 year circ who might be opposed to the consolidation always have the publisher's own data option for promoting high one year circ.

If this is too much, too fast Sue Burn's suggestion would be a good compromise.

Sign me up for the working group.

[Erica Bernard]

Combining the qualified in to one section should work out fine. Two years is practically new anyways. It would save time and money on my end.

The hardest part of my job is tracking the additions and removals. I do not have a program that does that and I have to do it manually. It takes a lot of time I don't have. As far as I have heard no one really uses that information. I would agree that we could do with out that.

[Karen Dawson]

Yes, people who have access to digital copy on their company’s server should be counted as qualified circulation for paid site licenses. The company buys these site licenses for the benefit of their employees. in my mind it is no different than company request for print. I think it is a valid vehicle for delivery and has raided print paid subscriptions in many cases.

[Karen Dawson]

As a fulfillment professional I am in favor of getting rid of adds and removals. It is complicated from a systems standpoint. And, as I agree with a previous statement here, it does need to be reviewed by the advertising community. It was explained to me some years ago when I was much younger in this field that its sole purpose was to show if there were large swaps of names on and off the file. Well, that is the nature of b-to-b marketing anyway. We all need to rotate lists from time to time.

[Ted Bahr]

As a Publisher who makes 50-150 sales calls on advertisers in the field every year I am adamantly opposed to eliminating the distinctions between 1-year, 2-year and 3-year circulation.

Cleaning up circ-level idiosyncracies is one thing, but we spend ALOT of time money and effort maintaining a 100% 1-year file and using it as a club to beat our competition.

There is a huge difference between someone who renews every year and someone who hasn't renewed in that cycle: they're no longer interested. One year vs two-year distinction is about 40% of the value of a BPA audit in the first place.

Speaking again from the perspective of an ad seller, 99.99% of the clients/agencies ignore adds and removes, and the other .001% don't know what to make of it. It adds no value.

I am available for the Task Force

Ted Bahr
BZ Media

[Joe]

The combination of 1 & 2 year is a nice idea. Whether you have issues or not maintaining a high number of 1 year names it moves you up to a standard that makes things easier to maintain. You wouldn't have to blow out your budget every year.

3rd year names should not be eliminated but redefined into something like "Due to expire" since over 3 year names are not allowed on statements anyway.

Get rid of the add/kills...

[Jodi Svenson]

With regard to 1&2Yr consolidation and eliminating 3Yr, eliminating 3Yr circulation would definitely financial impact Agriculture publications...most carry 3 year circ. As far as consolidating 1 & 2 yr, a great number of pubs still sell on 1 yr and 1 yr direct request...consolidation muddies these waters dramatically. I agree with Sue Burns and would like to see 0 - 12 months from Qual Date = 1 year, 13 - 24 for 2 year & 25 - 36 for 3 year.

I would very much like to participate on the Task Force.

[Jim Browning]

My responses are:
1.) The media buy has changed and will continue to change as various audience delivery channels are used by publishers. It is great to see that, again, BPA is ahead of the curve in reviewing and upgrading the presentation of auditted data for the advertising and media community.

2.) The question on elimination of paragraph 2 adds and removals should be placed in the hands of the media buyers. Are they using this information to determine audience loyalty and uniformity of file maintenance as they did in the past? If so, it should stay. If it is not relavent to their buying decision, it should go.

I suspect that paragraph 3c has less value to them than paragraph 2.

3.) I am a very solid proponent of the initiative for BPA recognition of paid site license subscribers. A clear definition of the audit and validation process is required but this is a growing and valid audience segment.

[Joanne]

I am extremely excited with the propsed changes and would be interested in joining the task force if it could be conducted via phone.

As a circultor with publications reaching a broad range of markets the current reporting structure could use a make-over.

[Rad Circ]

3b changes are a good idea. Afterall paid books offer 2 year subscriptions and no-one questions the "quality or timeliness" of those subscribers. Let's stop pigeon-holing our data on the guise of something whose relevancy was never really determined in the first place.

Adds/Kills - Have no strong opinion either way.

Site licenses - Show paid site license statistics in BPA but show detail of who each company is and how many people they represent - it will be up to the advertising community as to whether they discount it or not. As far as circulators should be concerned, it still represents a magazine audience and proper reporting should exist on it.

[Glenn Hansen]

Interesting perspective. The table has a column heading of QUALIFIED WITHIN, which is then followed by 1YEAR, 2YEARS, 3 YEARS. It does not state RECEIVING THE PUBLICATION WITHIN. We will ask the task force to look at this and determine how it can be clarified.

[Sue]

i would be interested in being on this task force if it can be done via the phone.

I have strong feelings on this and do not want to see the circ in 1 and 2 year combined.

[Yi-Hsiao Liu]

For publishers who have a majority of one-year subscribers, why should they be penalized for having a higher quality circulation base? You can definitely maintain a 1-year base without having to annoy your customers. Our renewal rates are 90+% and 80+% qualified within 1-year. It can be done.

However, I think removing the requirement to report add/kills is a great idea. The process is tedious and our advertisers don't really care much for that data set either; none of our media kits even mention the stat line.

[Controlled B-2-B]

I agree with the posting by Kim Clothier for TRUE reporting.

Maybe we should report days instead of years to make this less confusing!

This is what people believe...
1st Year = 1-364 Days
2nd Year = 365-729 Days
3rd Year = 730-1094 Days

This is the ACTUAL current system (with extreme scenarios included):
1st Year = 1-364 Days
2nd Year = 1-729 Days
3rd Year = 365-1094 Days

EXTREME EXAMPLE: John Doe subscribes at 11:59PM the night before the audit cycle begins. One year and two minutes later, John Doe is a 3 year subscription.

Fix this HUGE problem first, and combining 1 and 2 year subscriptions would not be a concern. Because the reported figures would always be accurate and there would be no gray areas.

In a normal person's mind, someone in their second year of their subscription should have the magazine no less than 366 days and no more than 729 days. How do you explain to an advertiser that someone who had the magazine for 2 days is in the 2 year column!

I'll pray to the circulation god that 1 and 2 year subscriptions are combined in the meantime.

[Sue Burns]

One Year/Two Year Consolidation
I love it! Every cycle ends with an upload of the telemarketing orders. We give the readers a break for about a month, then we’re blasting out with a subscription renewal email and/or putting a cover tip on the Jun or Dec issue as it represents the first issue of the new cycle. We look silly asking for another renewal so soon and the customer wonders why we’re asking again so soon. While we’re all trying to get the almighty first year, direct request order, the customer is on the receiving end of all this - and is probably (simultaneously) hearing from as many as 4-6 publishers who are producing a print or digital publication that is meaningful to his/her business. This change would be good news for circulators and good news for readers!

I do not think third year circulation should be eliminated. I think it should remain optional.

Add/Kill Activity
I suspect there is not a great deal of attention paid to add/kill activity during a media buy unless someone wants to point out a competitors “fire drill” that occurred just before an audited issue close. I don’t think that the add/kill activity is all that complicated for fulfillment systems, I just question its meaningfulness these days. Perhaps add/kill activity could be an optional reporting segment?

Paid Circulation
I’m not so sure this is a good idea. If you are a publisher who is getting $50/year for a subscription and are competing with a publisher who is charging $7.50/year for a subscription, this is where you would want to differentiate your paid circulation differences.

[Kim Clothier]

I was very excited to read about the proposed ideas for change. Regarding the 3B changes, I would be concerned the suggested changes would "dummy down" the information we provide our advertisers.

What I would like to see is a TRUE reporting of 1 year, 2 year. Currently if the audit cycle is 12/1 - 11/30 and John Doe subscribe's on 11/30 at 12:01AM he is now a 2 year subscriber even though he's been a subscriber for less than 24 hours. I'd like to see 0 - 12 months from Qual Date = 1 year, 13 - 24 for 2 year & 25 - 36 for 3 year.

I am in complete agreement with eliminating the reporting of the add/kills as long as there is still some kind of duplication check done.

As for the site license, why is that any different than pass-along distribution of the printed copy of the publication?

In closing, I would love to participate on the Task Force.

[Marcia Coutts]

As a circulator, I am in favor of doing away with additions and removals on statements. Of course, it would be important to get feedback from the buyer community before making this type of change. What are they looking for regarding churn rates? What difference does it make to them? The whole point of being BPA audited is to validate the circulation data provided by publishers to advertising buyers. If buyers are not using, or don't understand the add/kill information, then what's the point?
Additionally, I've recently been involved in the re-design of our circulation databases and had to dictate the conditions required to automate subscription acquisition through email and website re-qualification and renewal. I found it nearly impossible to accurately dictate all the conditions required for correctly recording adds/kills via an automated system (as exists in online renewals/re-quals). Having read this blog, I see I'm not alone.
If buyers are really interested in seeing the churn rate, maybe there's a simpler, more uniform way to report it? If they are not, then why are we wasting precious time trying to do so?

[Charlene Taylor]

The burden on circulators needs to be addressed. We strongly support the combination of the 1st and 2nd year category in paragraph 3B. In addition, Digital subscribers should be counted only when they vist the site (paid or non-paid) and should be counted by indivudal rather than a site license.

Lastly, we do not find adds/removals to be time consuming or problematic. We do track circulation turn over for our competetitors utilizing the adds/removals.
Thank you.