Tony Stewart is chairman of the AdsML Technical Working Group and director of Consulting at RivCom, which provides services to help news and media organisations gain maximum benefit from new technologies. He can be reached by e-mail at tony.stewart@rivcom.com.
One of the highlights of this year’s IfraExpo is the launch of AdsML 1.0, a comprehensive, international standard for the digital exchange of advertising information. As described in earlier articles, AdsML 1.0 is the first product of the AdsML Consortium, a new industry association that is supported by both Ifra and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). Membership in the AdsML Consortium is open to all interested parties for a nominal fee.
The AdsML standard is designed to help publishers, advertisers and other participants in the advertising supply chain automate many processes that are currently performed manually. Implementation of AdsML will shorten deadlines, save time and money, reduce errors and create new business opportunities for all concerned.
This article provides a brief overview of the AdsML approach and discusses how it will interact with the software systems we currently use, from graphics packages to booking systems and media planners. If you want to learn more about AdsML from both a business and technical perspective, I urge you to attend the “Focus on Advertising” seminar on either Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 or Wednesday morning at 10:30 in seminar room 3.
How it works
AdsML 1.0 defines an XML message format that provides a straightforward and easy-to-implement mechanism for exchanging advertising information between software systems. You can think of AdsML as a large envelope into which other envelopes are placed. These other envelopes carry items like ordering information, creative content, payment and invoicing information.
An AdsML Processor takes this information from the business applications that created it, determines where and how it is to be sent. The packages are properly addressed and passed to the appropriate communications systems for actual transport.
At the receiving system the reverse happens. Once the authenticity of the sender is verified, the messages are unpacked and passed to the appropriate application for processing.
AdsML reduces redundant development
Currently, most advertising workflow is still handled by phone, fax and messenger services; there are relatively few connections in place that allow trading partners to transmit advertising information in digital form.
This situation is slowly changing as more and more publishers, vendors and advertisers integrate their systems. However, most of these early implementations are done in a point-to-point fashion, which involves creating a separate, custom-built link between each two systems that need to communicate.
The point-to-point approach seems straightforward when connecting just a few systems, but it means that commonly required functionality (such as verifying that a message comes from a trusted sender or that it is in an acceptable format) is implemented again and again each time a new pair of systems is linked up. Over time this repeated reinvention of the wheel adds up to a substantial extra burden, especially for organisations that have many types of systems or that need to communicate with many business partners.
By providing a common interchange format that can handle all of the different types of advertising information, AdsML removes the need to implement one-off versions of what should be common functionality.
This frees up resources to develop features that provide greater business benefit. It also creates an architecture that is simpler and easier to maintain, because the “gatekeeper” functionality for all of the advertising information entering or leaving an organisation can be grouped into a single place: the AdsML Processor.
Moving from documents to software
Like any digital information standard, AdsML 1.0 is just a set of documents. It won’t deliver concrete benefits until vendors and integrators provide systems that support the AdsML architecture. For most vendors this will involve adapting their existing applications so that they can communicate with an AdsML Processor (as shown on the opposite page), or in some cases adding the full functionality of an AdsML processor into their systems. A few vendors have indicated that they may also develop a standalone AdsML Processor, once it is clear that the marketplace will support their efforts.
Following this week’s launch, AdsML 1.0 enters a six-month period of public comment and evaluation. During this time, we expect to see several prototype implementations involving publishers and advertisers in both the European and U.S. markets. These early installations will give us the first concrete evidence of just how well the AdsML architecture will deliver on its promises.
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