At IfraExpo 2002 in Barcelona, Ifra held one of its regularly scheduled IPC meetings. What began as a casual conversation during that meeting about how XML should play a more active role in the advertising life cycle quickly gained momentum the next day during another regularly scheduled meeting about IfraAdConnection. Since the Expo, a flurry of activity ensued, as conversations turned into actions. The result? A joint IFRA/NAA initiative for the creation of an advertising standard known as AdsML™, backed by an international consortium. This is the first in a series of reports that will shed light on the AdsML initiative.
“We are happy to be working with the NAA and all of the representatives on the Consortium,” said Harald Löffler, Ifra’s research manager and the chairman of the initiative’s Steering Committee. “Standardisation is one of Ifra’s most important roles and a great deal of Ifra’s research budget is dedicated to standardisation for the benefit of Ifra members and for the benefit of the newspaper industry as such. AdConnexion (ad booking) and IfraTrack (production management) are living examples of Ifra recommendations. The international acceptance of AdsML, similar to the NewsML development of the IPTC (International Press Communications Council), is one of the main objectives of the AdsML Consortium. Therefore, the Consortium is asking for support from associations, media agencies, publishers and system suppliers worldwide.”
Comprehensive approach
Since XML hit the publishing scene years ago, there has been a lot of impressive work on the editorial side to create the NewsML standard. But from a business perspective, let’s face it: advertising is what brings in the revenues. Simply, publishers would welcome progress similar to that of NewsML for advertising. There has been some effort for certain aspects of the advertising cycle, such as AdConnection, CREST and Space/XML, and this work will definitely be taken into consideration for this initiative. But the industry yearns for something more comprehensive.
“The advertising industry needs a set of standards to allow us to efficiently handle the data exchanges/transactions between the different systems in the business chain,” said Allan Marshall, managing director of Associated Mediabase in London, who will represent European publishers on the Consortium. It was Marshall who encouraged and initiated the first official meeting in November, inviting various industry players from the publishing, supplier and association sides to discuss the possibility of creating AdsML. “Current standards, where they exist, handle data exchanges/transactions in a disjointed way. It is my belief that AdsML will bind these transactions together into a coherent whole and plug the gaps that currently exist so that costs can be reduced and new revenue opportunities exploited.”
What it will cover
The Consortium is taking a broad perspective regarding the various media that will be supported AdsML. The specifications to be developed will support not only print but also the various business cycles for advertising in TV, radio, internet, mobile technologies, billboards (“outdoor advertising”), even on-screen advertising for cinema. The first specification, AdsML Version 1.0, which is scheduled to be available by October, will focus on those stages of the advertising lifecycle that offer the greatest immediate business benefit and/or for which an appropriate XML vocabulary already exists. Version 1.0 will support:
- Classified advertising in print and online;
- Online advertising, including banner and pop-up advertising as well as advertising that forms part of the core content of a web site;
- ROP advertising in print;
- Inserts;
- E-mail advertising
- Advertising by SMS, MMS or other mobile technologies.
Since November, the various participants in the initiative have been busy forming the Consortium and its related committees and work groups, such as the Steering Committee, Technical Work Group, Process Work Group and so on. But they have also defined concrete objectives and tasks, as work on the first specification is already at an advanced stage. One critical partner on the Consortium is RivCom Limited, which will be guiding the specifications process. RivCom did the same work on the NewsML standard.
Benefits for suppliers, too
This initiative needs the supplier community onboard, as it has as much to benefit from this as publishers. A number of suppliers in the advertising sector are already involved in the initiative, including Vio Worldwide. David Jones, general manager of Vio and who will represent the supply industry on the Steering Committee said: “Building effective standards is fundamental to undertaking any serious attempt at streamlining the supply chain. The absence of a standard governing end-to-end booking, insertion and payment processes for all types of advertising is one reason why communication between agencies, media buyers, prepress houses and publishers is still so inefficient and costly.
“For suppliers, the big win is that they do not have to build different interfaces every time they tackle an integration project. They can reuse previous work, reduce the number of languages they have to support and shorten the implementation time. Standards provide clarity by removing confusion.
“For their customers, the workflow partners themselves, these development benefits translate into reducing the cost of achieving an integrated and automated supply chain, and speeding up the process of its implementation. Automating business processes electronically in this way saves all participants labour and cost, as well as making organisations more responsive and enabling them to improve the service to their customers.”
The following are some of the specific lifecycle stages that fall within the broad vision of what AdsML will support:
Ratecard Mediapack: The media pack includes information about: circulation and reach figures of the advertising media offered, demographic statistics of the advertising media’s audience, advertisement options available for sale, pricing structure including current prices and special offers, regional information, and technical specifications that the advertising content provided by advertisers needs to conform to.
Booking: The exchanges between an advertiser and a publisher resulting in a confirmed booking. Booking consists of two primary exchange phases: planning and order. The planning phase includes inventory and pricing exchanges. Inventory exchanges cover: availability of advertising space, enquiry for a particular advertising space, reservation of advertising space, acknowledgement of the space reservation. Pricing exchanges cover: initial price enquiry, the price response, and preview of the quoted advertisement. The order phase includes exchanges for: order placement, order acknowledgement, changing or updating orders, and cancellations.
Production: The exchanges and workflow between advertiser, any other parties involved, and a publisher during the production of an ad and its lifecycle transition from concept to published item. Production consists of two main phases: content creation and content transmission.
Publishing: The exchanges needed for the publication of an advertisement, including the publication or run instructions defining publishing requirements, and the confirmation of the publication.
Feedback on responses from publisher to advertiser: The provision of feedback by the publisher to the advertiser on responses to the ad. This includes both actual responses and response statistics.
Payment: Payment-related exchanges between publisher and advertiser. This includes: prepayment with an order, invoicing, statements of account, contract reconciliation, and payment orders (including associated account information).
A web site, www.adsml.org, will be dedicated to the initiative, and is expected to be ready by mid-April.
Download article from newspaper techniques April 2003