BPA Redesigns, Shifts Exclusively to Brand Report Format

BPA Worldwide will shift all its business and consumer members to the brand reach report format, which has recently been redesigned.

BPA Worldwide will shift all its business and consumer members to the brand reach report format, which has recently been redesigned.

BPA Worldwide is planning to transition all of its business and consumer members to its Brand Report format, which allows audience developers to report audience metrics for all of a brand’s media channels. The auditing firm will phase out its traditional circulation statement with the December 2013 reporting period.

BPA is debuting a new design for its Brand Reports in the interim—business members will have a green-hued report; consumer members will have a pink one.

About 300 members are now using the Brand Report, says BPA, and as it transitions the rest, it’s also adopted a new rule on total audience reporting.

BPA says there has been an ongoing debate over whether a brand’s total, cross-channel audience footprint is a valuable metric. Some members argue a cumulative figure isn’t valuable to advertisers if there’s no distinction between unique individuals.

“Today, recognizing significant input and anecdotal results from both media owneno and buyers, the Board concluded that the sum of all media channels does not add value to the media buy as originally believed, and, in fact, has caused some general confusion in the marketplace over what the grand total number actually represents,” says a report from BPA.

Accordingly, the total audience number will be removed from future Brand Reports. Specific media channel audience totals will still be reported, however.

iCompli Services Expanded

Early in 2012, BPA launched its iCompli division to expand auditing and tracking services to non-print related activities, especially digital, that involve monitoring standards set by other industry entities. BPA recently expanded its iCompli services, launching Ad iCompli, to track digital ad campaign performance across multiple sites, networks and exchanges.

The marketer-facing program will consolidate data collected by separate firms, while automating the comparison of campaign performance metrics.

According to BPA, online media buyers will receive near-realtime results on metrics like positioning and engagement. A dashboard alerts buyers to problem areas and will show whether a campaign is compliant with the original media plan.

When the campaign is over, a BPA  analyst will review the performance and provide an objective evaluation.

Ad iCompli has been in development for two years and was tested with several agencies for a year before launch.