Vio Worldwide has shown an advertising and publishing industry ‘first’, with a live demonstration of an AdsML-integrated (Advertising Mark-up Language) solution combining a digital insertion order and attached artwork, delivered together into a publisher’s in-house planning and ad production systems. The demo took place at last month’s Ad Agency CIO Summit in New York City, which played host to 60 of the advertising community’s technical leaders. The solution shown to delegates incorporated digital insertion orders supplied directly from Mediaplex Systems’ (formerly AdWare Systems) (www.mediaplex.com) agency media system using AdsML. These were automatically integrated, by taking advantage of the Vio Insertion Database, with an AdsML-compliant Vio job ticket (www.vio.com). The expanded job ticket, alongside the ad files themselves, was then seamlessly submitted through Vio to a booking system from Quad Graphics’ AdSync (www.impoze.com), simulating delivery to magazine publisher Gruner & Jahr USA(www.gjusa.com). This was the first ever digital end-to-end advertising workflow, comprising an entirely digitally integrated supply chain from booking through to ad delivery. Alan Darling, Executive VP at Vio Worldwide, explains: “Digital solutions have revolutionized many areas of advertising but, to a large extent, creative and media planning agencies, ad agencies and publishers’ sales and production departments are still islands, operating isolated systems which are largely unconnected, where information is still exchanged by phone and fax. “While this continues, the potential for error and duplication of effort is enormous; the time taken for publishers to chase and match incoming copy from dozens of suppliers is a costly burden; and advertising agencies are channeling unnecessary time and effort into process management. Senior agency professionals acknowledge that better communication between agencies and publishers holds the key to more efficient implementation of complex advertising campaigns.” He adds, “AdsML-based process integration offers a way of connecting the business systems to the production systems, and tracking the progress of ads from the source, all the way downstream to the publishers, and their prepress and print suppliers. This demonstration is an extremely significant step as it shows that the goal of delivering advertising files to the publisher digitally, along with all the associated business metadata, has now been achieved. The potential for efficiency savings, and shorter lead times enhancing revenue opportunities, is obvious.” This view is supported by Dennis Davidson, Group Production Director at G&J USA Publishing. He comments: “Publishers and agencies have a need to find an easier, more efficient way to do business. Operating within global spec standards being developed by the AdsML Technical Working Group, many companies, including Mediaplex, Quad/Graphics and Vio Worldwide, are helping to make this a reality. Simultaneous digital delivery of an ad file and electronic insertion order will lead to electronic billing and tear sheets. This will help tremendously in making print advertising a more efficient medium.” Bill Hewitt, General Manager of Mediaplex Systems adds: “Mediaplex was extremely pleased to find an open standards solution that we could provide to our print media customers for digital workflow. For too long this capability has not been available. The AdsML solution fits perfectly in our browser-based software environment.” Jay Parnau, Quad/Graphics’ Chief Architect for Impoze and AdSync reinforces these views: "The short term benefits of using AdsML are simply less faxes, less order entry, and less potential for error. But in the long term, this is a great leap towards an end-to-end, automated digital workflow throughout the print industry, and we are very excited by the progress that we've made over the past year." Alan Darling concludes: “Just as Vio has been a driving force in the development of the JDF standard for the graphic arts industry, we have pioneered AdsML as a meaningful tool for better integration of the advertising community. This initiative is proof positive of how quickly and simply AdsML can be used by supply chain integrators like Vio to create interoperable solutions, and how the resulting applications can deliver immediate commercial benefits up and down the advertising supply chain.”