AdWriter’s Realtor Relief
by Karen Bowman
Real-estate agents are paid to sell, not write. Accordingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offers local Realtors relief from their ad-writing woes.
Solving this problem was key to developing solid partnerships, says Sara Mauermann, the paper’s online-classified manager. While researching ways to secure Multiple Listing Service data to develop online real-estate listings, she came across an Ohio-based company called AdWriter. A homes-magazine provider, AdWriter partnered only with Realtors at that time.
Intrigued by the company’s software, which can automatically write real-estate ads in minutes, Mauermann negotiated with AdWriter to adapt the tool to produce classified liners, online-ad copy and niche publications. The company modified its software to accommodate column widths and other newspaper specifications.
AdWriter takes raw MLS data and quickly creates a “results-oriented” ad, explains Richard Dobson, the paper’s senior vice president of advertising. The client selects the number of lines desired, and the program formats the ad, dropping in the company’s logo. The ad then can be sent to the paper via the Internet.
The software creates ads based on certain demographic information within the MLS. “The formula is based on the market and the expectations of the buyers,” Mauermann explains. “If it’s a $450,000 house with four bedrooms, the ad won’t describe the air conditioning and the garage, because at that price those would be expected. Instead, it talks about the Jacuzzi and cathedral ceilings.”
The Journal Sentinel installed AdWriter at participating real-estate offices. Mauermann and Dobson agree that the paper and its Realtors mutually benefit. Although training and support have been the primary costs for the newspaper, Dobson says the software significantly cuts production time.
Using AdWriter also has reduced the number of credits and adjustments due to incorrect ads and has allowed the Journal Sentinel to offer more products to agents, generating additional revenue. Prudential Preferred Properties, for instance, uses AdWriter to create Prudential’s TIP (Total Inventory Publication), a 32-to-40 page insert that appears in the newspaper monthly. After the information is submitted electronically, the tab can be generated within hours, Mauermann says. “This has been a huge call-generator—more so than our Sunday ads,” says Katie Huebschen, Prudential’s marketing director.
Mauermann currently is working on partnerships with other local Realtors. The Journal Sentinel has a waiting list of other companies “clamoring” to have the software installed, she says. “The Realtors love the software, and that is the true success behind this product.”
Bowman is a Bridgewater, Va., free-lancer. E-mail, kbowman@bridgewater.edu.
Classified Ads CRESTing
Nearly a year after NAA’s classified-interchange standard was introduced, usage is on the rise.
Speaking at a recent task-force meeting, a half-dozen industry vendors and one newspaper group confirmed they are now using the ad-exchange standard, trademarked as CREST™.
Tribune Co. of Chicago is in the process of implementing CREST internally, with initial tests being conducted at The Orlando Sentinel. There the standard is being incorporated into an online-classified placement service, at https://classxact.orlandosentinel.com.
A soft launch with the Sentinel’s automotive customers suggests they are willing to input the extra interchange information the standard requires, such as vehicle-identification numbers.
While the Tribune’s tests indicate no problems using the standard as an exchange medium, gathering information using existing front-ends remains a concern. In Orlando, fielded data gathered via classxact’s Web-browser interface are being stored separately.
Among vendors incorporating CREST into their systems are InfiNet of Norfolk, Va., and Classified Ventures of Chicago, which say they’re ready to accept CREST feeds. Global Digital Technologies of Pleasanton, Calif., is using CREST for data exchange, while Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Pentawave is using it for internal-information exchange. AdStar.com of Marina del Rey, Calif., is generating and processing ads using the standard, while Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., has both standalone and integrated products on board.
Work continues on mapping standard classifications and on developing a system for the bulk transfer of ads and related management processes. These may be linked to other online business-information-exchange processes developed by the Information and Content Exchange Protocol, or ICE, itself a project of the World Wide Web Consortium.
Other projects on deck include developing an interchange process between the National Association of Realtors’ format and CREST.
At presstime, the NAA Classified Advertising Standards Task Force was to meet in Chicago to discuss technical issues.
Eliminating Errors
in Digital Ads
by Anna America
While newspapers welcome the rise in digital ads, some struggle with a resulting challenge: how to handle advertisers’ mistakes.
Digital ads—even those that arrive from experienced agencies and have been through many rounds of proofing—sometimes carry problems ranging from misspellings to too-dark photos to poor color quality. Reverting to their analog roots, ad-production staff often still call them “camera-ready,” and they certainly can be just as problematic.
In general, newspaper quality managers say, the goal is to make advertisers as responsible as possible for their own quality control. For one thing, since most digital ads are submitted as Portable Document Format files, making corrections is difficult. And newspapers are leery of changing something that may be exactly what the advertiser wanted—managers recount examples of photos run intentionally dark to attain a somber mood, images turned upside down as an attention-getter, and words purposefully misspelled for effect.
“We have to assume that when a camera-ready ad comes to us, advertisers have checked and double-checked it,” says John T. McKinney, quality coordinator for The Oregonian in Portland.
On the other hand, nobody wants an advertiser to look bad, and sometimes that’s what happens if an ad runs as submitted. Like most papers, if The Oregonian catches an obvious content error, or an ad reproduces poorly, newspaper staff will try to contact the customer. If there isn’t time, “we will on occasion make a correction,” McKinney says. “If we are looking at something that is going to be a disaster, our people have more than the freedom—they have the responsibility—to step in and fix it.”
Corrections, however, can cause new problems. When a national advertiser submits a problematic ad to dozens of papers and only some choose to improve the color, “what happens to consistency when 40 different papers have 40 different results?” asks Kevin S. Conner, quality-assurance manager for The Washington Post.
McKinney agrees, saying that’s why it’s essential that the customer be told what was done and why. “I think we really hurt ourselves when we alter files and print them without feeding that information back.”
While human error accounts for some mistakes, the greatest problem remains ignorance about newspaper printing.
Many national ads are created for magazines, and agencies often submit them to newspapers without realizing they will look drastically different on newsprint.
“Few advertisers understand how to create electronic color-ad material for optimum newspaper reproduction,” notes Paul Lynch, director of quality assurance and pre-press for the Chicago Tribune, which doesn’t check customer-supplied ads for grammar or punctuation but does check and correct color quality. Running ads without quality-checking color, he believes, would result in a good percentage of ads “printing at less than optimum quality.”
To alleviate such problems, The Washington Post holds regular sessions with advertisers on newspaper-printing issues—and the paper’s rate cards emphasize that responsibility for errors in camera-ready submissions lies with advertisers.
Conner, part of the Specifications for Newsprint Advertising Production Rewrite Committee, says the Post purchased 600 copies of the revised book (see p. 30) and will distribute them free to major advertisers. Adhering to national quality standards, such as those outlined in SNAP, is critical to improving consistency, managers agree.
“‘We print on tight deadlines; we print on poor stock.’ For a long time, we’ve wrapped those excuses around ourselves,” McKinney says. “To be the dominant player in this century, we have to do away with excuses and improve the consistency of the way we lay ink down on paper.”
America is a Tulsa-based free-lancer. E-mail, annaamerica@yahoo.com; phone, (918) 836-6708.