In a shift towards total brand metrics and away from single channel measurement, BPA Worldwide announced today that, in cooperation with Nielsen Online, BPA will bundle enhanced website traffic measurement with all print and event audits without increasing existing dues and fees.

BPA members around the world will now have near real time online reporting of audited web activity included with circulation audit of print products and attendance at exhibitions or events.

BPA members will now be able to access website traffic information—including page impressions, unique browsers, users sessions, unique browser frequency, user session duration, page duration and an executive summary of the above—on an unlimited basis to retrieve nearly-real time data, 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week. The ability to select by market sector, country of origin of traffic, or specific site also exists. Members can print or download website traffic information based on daily, weekly, monthly or historical reports, or forward the traffic data directly to sales staff or prospective advertisers. Although BPA will not produce individual reports for the online data, top-line web data can be integrated with a brand's BPA circulation or attendance data. BPA will also work with Nielsen to collect qualitative survey data from website users for more robust measurement and demographics by site and market sector.

Margie Gilbride, Marketing Communications Manager, Beiersdorf Middle East, who chairs BPA Worldwide's Middle East Advisory Board, welcomed the announcement: "This is a great initiative in providing significant added value to BPA members at no additional cost. It means media owners will be able to access near real time information on their web traffic, which in turn will help them realise the potential of their sites. Moreover, for many advertisers, who have never been completely sure of the veracity of web traffic data, this new breadth of information is sure to make online an even more viable advertising channel for advertisers."

According to Glenn Hansen, BPA president and CEO, the global media auditing organization has been eager to create this added-value bundle for its members. "Last year we made the decision to manage revenue and expenses of our not-for-profit organization to enable BPA to offer more services for the same existing rate," he said.

"Cost containment measures and pricing management enable BPA to return value to its members by including 24/7 web measurement for every member with no change in dues or fees," Hansen continued. "We saw the opportunity to give back to our members a truly value-added package to measure their entire brand. This 'integrated pricing, integrated media' approach is vital to BPA's mission to lead the world in media auditing. And that mission only becomes truly validated when we can say 'whatever the channel'."

The new tag-enabled census tool, powered by Nielsen's SiteCensus service, will be launched in beta test to BPA members already participating in BPA's log file-based interactive audits, as well as those members with print audits who have volunteered to participate in the test. The beta test is scheduled to run September through December with full roll-out to BPA's membership in January 2009.

"Nielsen Online and BPA Worldwide share a common goal of driving transparency and accountability within the online advertising industry, and we are delighted to be working together to support this important initiative," said Manish Bhatia, president, U.S. sales and global services, Nielsen Online. "By bundling SiteCensus' comprehensive and independent data and insights within its audit services, now delivering both on- and offline brand measurement, the BPA will increase value for its members and, ultimately, advertisers."

"BPA chose to work with Nielsen", Hansen explained, "because like BPA, Nielsen is a globally recognized brand in the media industry. It has cutting edge, patented web measurement and reporting systems in place, and an installed base of media buyer users".

The "BPA powered by Nielsen Online" solution offers website traffic metrics providing an industry standard that gives advertisers and media buyers an apples-to-apples comparison when making their marketing decisions. "There are a number of web measurement tools available to media owners," Hansen said. "This new solution will create a level playing field with a single set of standards—provided on a constant basis—performed by one analytics tool—that advertisers and agencies can trust as accurate. A single, standard web measuring system across BPA membership eliminates any guesswork on why data is different amongst competitive sites.

According to Hansen, BPA made the move from its previous log file-based interactive audit to page-tagging because the latter gets data to market much faster and at significant savings. As of January 2009, BPA will no longer offer log file audits to its members.

As part of its agreement with Nielsen Online, BPA will conduct a System Certification on Nielsen's SiteCensus tool on an annual basis to ensure it is properly collecting and reporting web traffic data. BPA will also continually audit each website to ensure correct tag placement and number of tags per page, as well as accurate filtering of spiders, robots and internal users from traffic counts.

Louis Hakim, Vice President of Royal Philip Electronics and CEO of Philips Middle East and Chairman of ABG

Louis Hakim, Vice President of Royal Philip Electronics and CEO of Philips Middle East was elected last month, as chairman of Advertisers Business Group (ABG), formerly known as GCC Association of Advertisers (GCC AA). Louis replaces former Unilever Chairman, Jan Zijderveld, who is departing from the Middle East on to a new opportunity at Unilever based in Singapore.

Alongside Louis Hakim's election, the newly appointed members of the committee include Sara Sahely, Manager of Group Advertising of Emirates, who was re-elected as Vice Chair, Raef Labaky from Nestle, Mark Butterfield from Unilever, Margie Gilbride from Beiersdorf, Chareeka Jolly from Kraft and Fadi Ghosn from General Motors.

"We will cooperate together to form a strong representation of the brand community at large, ensuring the implementation of the ABG's vision of taking the lead in setting global best practice standards in Media and Advertising", says Louis Hakim, Chairman of ABG. "We will also develop communication campaigns to raise awareness and drive interest around ABG."

Through his new role, Louis together with the team aim to keep the momentum on People Meters and constantly evaluating the regular updates on the progress and results, in addition to pushing forward a quantifiable auditing process of print publications using Castor.

"As an association, we will work on building bridges with large organizations on common topics of interest where learnings and successes can be shared. Moreover, ABG will also seek to enhance its membership by providing quarterly or semi-annual forums to give marketers the opportunity to discuss issues and challenges facing them in the Middle East. These forums will be followed by workshops where potential solutions can be generated in addition to promoting cross learning between brands through sharing challenges and best practices", added Louis.

The chair of the Middle East Advisory Board of global media audit organisation, BPA Worldwide, has called on advertisers to move their advertising dollars from unaudited titles to audited titles, including Akhbar Al Arab, which has become the first daily Arabic newspaper in the UAE to publish independently-audited circulation data.

The audit showed that the mainly free Akhbar Al Arab had a 'public place' circulation of 50,325 in Abu Dhabi for the weekday edition and 40,166 for the weekend edition. The majority of these copies were circulated through public place distribution at retail, public and private locations, though 3,040 copies had an audited distribution through street boxes in Abu Dhabi.

Margie Gilbride, who is also marketing communications manager for Beiersdorf Middle East , a leading manufacturer of branded consumer products for skin and beauty care, commented:

"Akhbar Al Arab is the first Arabic newspaper in the UAE to publish BPA-audited circulation data and I would encourage advertisers to take full advantage of this publisher's  commitment to transparency in its circulation. I hope this sets a positive example and is an encouragement to other Arabic newspapers to also be pioneers in circulation transparency in the region."

"The BPA audit is our way of differentiating Akhbar Al Arab in the market and assuring advertisers, whether they be regional or international, that we are working to a globally-recognised audit standard," explains Akhbar Al Arab's General Manager, Abdulrahman Shemiry.

Akhbar Al Arab is not the only Arabic newspaper in BPA membership. The audit organisation is also working closely with the Oman-based weekly Al Isbou'a.