Digital-Ad Dominance
by Andrew Bowser
Only two years ago, the market for transmitting digital ads from advertisersto newspapers was in chaos. At least nine different companies, using a varietyof technologies and formats, offered delivery services. However, one has sinceemerged as the dominant player: AdSEND from Associated Press.
AP's strategy was to make its AdSEND computer systems free to membernewspapers and earn its profit from advertisers. Bigger newspapers were givenPentium-based OS/2 systems, while smaller papers got Macintosh software thatallows them to dial into a bulletin-board system.
Today, technically savvy newspaper people are quite familiar with AdSEND. Atthe Los Angeles Times, for instance, about 70 percent of digital ads arrive viathe service, according to Adam Reeves, the Times' digital-advertisingsupervisor. "It's the most dependable service we have," Reeves says.
AdSEND moves more than 60,000 ads per month, claiming over 90 percent of themultipoint ad-transmission business in the United States. The service is used by400 advertisers and 1,300 newspapers.
AP picked Adobe's Acrobat as AdSEND's vehicle for ad delivery, setting thestage for that technology to emerge as a de facto standard. According to JimFarrell, director of AdSEND, the Acrobat portable document format came closestto meeting the needs of the newspaper industry. "We felt that it would bethe simplest format for paginated newspapers to go from file to plate," hesays.
AdSEND's main competitor is Digiflex, a service primarily focused on theWest Coast. Digiflex chose TIFF/IT, a magazine-industry standard, as itsdelivery format.
One newspaper reports that it is dissatisfied with Digiflex, complaining ofunreturned phone calls and delays in notifying the paper that ads have beenuploaded.
"A lot of times, ads have appeared in there, and we have no writtenrecord that it's even in," the newspaper's digital-ad liaison says.
The new owners of Digiflex say they plan to focus on customer concerns. "Weare making a number of changes," says James Johnson, chief financialofficer of new owner Transdata International Inc.
Newspaper consultant David M. Cole says that despite AdSEND's dominance,Digiflex will probably maintain its niche in coming years. "Digiflex hassome accounts here on the West Coast that I just don't anticipate AdSENDgetting," says Cole.
Despite the de facto standardization of ad transmissions from largeadvertisers, smaller advertisers continue to pose a problem for some papers.Standardization headaches may be soothed, however, as AP plans to develop aservice designed for local advertisers.
Andrew Bowser is a writer on technology and industrial applications.E-mail, andyb@comm.net; phone, (504)897-4026.