BPA Worldwide (CCAB in Canada) approved several rule amendments at its annual meeting held recently in New York City.

Here are the highlights shortened from a BPA release on Tuesday:

Audited Web Traffic: The auditor will no longer require that members use the BPA proprietary tag powered by Nielsen. Using an enhanced audit process, BPA can now work with other existing web analytics tags, including Google Analytics and/or Omniture SiteCatalyst tags. The effective date of this change will be July 1, 2012.

Reporting Apps: Over the last few months, BPA said it has seen media owners develop App registration (free) or payment (paid) gateways. While the app is often free, when first accessed, the end user must either register or pay to gain access to the subscription/copy. Through this gateway mechanism, media owners can now prove qualification, and may now report the copies served through apps as qualified circulation.

Pre-Populated Electronic Qualification Forms: BPA voted to allow publishers to pre-populate electronic subscription forms (web, email, text) with the previous year’s data. The maximum age of the previous demographic data cannot exceed three years in age and the subscriber must be asked to review the data and press a single confirm button to agree the information is correct before completing the renewal.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR): BPA voted to allow telemarketing companies to utilize Interactive Voice Response (IVR) in their subscriber qualifying and re-qualifying efforts.

Digital Request, Electronic: BPA has amended the rule to maintain the original access requirements, and the six-month period, but the six-month access period will now end with the analyzed issue, and, in so doing, provide media owners with a full twelve months of subscriber access.

BPA will host a free webinar on June 13 (1 p.m. EST) to review these initiatives and rule amendments in further detail. A live question and answer session will follow.

Unless otherwise specified, all changes will be in effect with the June 2012 reporting period.