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NAA's Classified Advertising Standards Task Force unveiled at the SuperConference Tuesday a common format allowing classified-ad publishers, advertisers and online sites to readily exchange and publish classified ads.
"This is a very exciting development for online classified ads, especially those published by newspapers," notes NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. "The ability to exchange hundreds of classified ads online brings a dramatic leap in service for the reader and value for the advertiser. The online classified-ad standard will give newspapers a new level of search sophistication, as well as create expanded potential for new and existing revenue models."
While differences in the ways publications handle classified advertising once caused little concern, the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web-based classifieds prompts change. As many publishers sought to aggregate their classifieds in order to offer advertisers and readers alike a broad reach, a common format and structure was needed for ads to be easily added to online databases, regardless of origin.
The NAA task force, including 40 representatives from classified, technical and new-media operations, as well as new-media technology providers, classified-system suppliers and large classified advertisers, began drafting the standard last year.
"Reaching agreement on this standard so swiftly is a remarkable achievement," says Eric Wolferman, NAA's senior vice president for technology. "Adopting a standard format for processing ads unleashes the enormous power of classified advertising in hundreds of newspapers across the country."
The new standard addresses classified advertising from the time it is placed--either through a traditional ad-sales representative or directly from the advertiser. Standard information sets, global tracking numbers and common data descriptions will allow easy sharing and organizing of classifieds in any medium or classified network. Though all the information may not appear in the print ad, the additional information collected allows the classifieds to be fully searchable online.
Four components of the standard will allow ads to be used on multiple networks and network appliances, as well as increase opportunities for aggregation. They are a standard data format, a standard transaction format, standard text-formatting tags and standard shorthand. Version 1.0 of the standard addresses the standard data format and standard text-formatting tags. Later versions will address the other components as the standard evolves.
The standard is represented electronically through a document type definition, or DTD, a virtual road map for classifieds. The DTD has a set of elements, or fields, which describe the product being sold. Some of the fields--such as name and other contact information--are required elements, and many more are recommended, giving publishers the standard information they need, while also allowing advertisers to be flexible.
The DTD is built using the XML markup language, allowing it to be easily modified. It is free and available for download from NAA's Web site (www.naa.org/technology/clsstdtf/index.html). The only costs to users will be its implementation.