Five years of planning and customised integration has brought a decades-old ambition of real-time centralised advertisement booking to reality for Australia’s News Limited publications.
The rollout effectively brings to an end the risk of spaces being double-booked, or impossible-to-deliver campaign programmes being sold... an end to ‘sad ads’.
News advertising systems business manager John Williamson says linking of ad booking systems and edition dummying for national and metropolitan newspapers through a browser-viewable central database is the answer to an advertising salesperson’s prayer.
“Finally sales teams handling major clients can see what spaces are available in our newspapers in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane and Perth, weeks ahead, without asking,” he says.
“From a customer view, it means that we can provide realistic responses to requests and enquiries for multiple ad campaigns across regions.”
With the final implementations being completed this month, the integration project links the ad ordering and layout dummying systems in six regions through a browser-based viewer accessible – with appropriate authorities – by staff in all the centres.
Key elements are the QuickLayout dummying system – the DOS version of which was originated by IT staff at News’ ‘Cairns Post’ and since developed by Melbourne-based Advanced Publishing Systems – and the Atex CyberSell booking system used by sales staff.
A “cooperative effort” between News and APS has seen individual regional databases linked to give a total overview via APS’ Optima product.
“Sales viewers show what’s been sold and what’s available, and can be refreshed in real time,” says Williamson.
A pilot scheme in Hobart got the project underway, with national daily ‘The Australian’, metropolitan daily and Sunday titles in Tasmania, Victoria and NSW- including ‘MX’ commuter papers – and the Perth ‘Sunday Times’ following in the rollout. Implementation at the metros and Sundays in Queensland and South Australia is currently completing the first stage.
Ironically, regional and community titles – including the pioneering ‘Cairns Post’ – will have to wait for the facility, as will News Magazines, to which CyberSell is currently being extended.
The process brings forward the creation of an edition plan for each issue of each newspaper to the moment space is booked into it. This could be six months before press, rather than just the week before. A single APS Optima database then draws information from regional databases, which is then viewable nationally.
QuickLayout is already in use to handle advertisement sections (but not classified) and the treatment of zoned ads, as well as marking up mono, spot and colour positions.
Sales teams can consult the viewer to see what is available, and if an attempt is made to book a second ad in the same premium position as another, or in a section which is already fully-booked – dubbed ‘sad ads’ – a notification is generated and fed back into booking workflows. The Atex single order entry product – which exports the data to individual divisional Optima databases – has also been modified to exploit this information.
Planning for the integration began five years ago, but was deferred to allow for the completion of the three-year CyberSell rollout in 2009.
“It’s been a cooperative effort, with each party feeding off each other’s ideas,” says Williamson. “But while it’s still in its very early stages, we’ve talked about enhancements to be built into the next release. Among these are likely to be search facilities – such as the ‘what if’ query, which I think has huge potential – and additional reporting for trends analysis.”
Early adopters are already providing good feedback, and sales teams are benefiting from the ability to view sales on supplements and special editions, and adjust plans and products.
“While it’s too early to prove the benefits, we’ve heard that sales teams are very happy with what they’re getting from it, and advertisers more confident,” he says.
And the sad ads? “It won’t totally eliminate problems yet, but will make it possible to identify them earlier, and mitigate the effects.
“Over the next 18 months, it will dramatically change the way we can deliver answers to advertisers.”
