It was announced today that Vio Worldwide, the digital supply chain company specializing in online advertising portals for publishers, is the sole supplier to the U.S. publishing community to be a ‘Founding Gateway’ in the AAAA’s (the American Association of Advertising Agencies) ground-breaking ‘ebiz for media’ initiative. Vio is representing the ‘sell side’ of print media advertising (i.e. the publishers) in the development of the ebiz for media Gateways – a new industry-wide system that will act as the secure electronic conduit for the seamless exchange of advertising business metadata between buy side systems (the advertisers, media buyers and advertising agencies) and sell side systems. Once established, this system will enable publishers for the first time to receive insertion orders directly out of media buying systems, digitally and without re-keying, avoiding costly booking and reconciliation errors: something publishers have long desired. The Founding Gateways will first develop a set of specifications for the ebiz for media Gateways that will be circulated for controlled industry comment on their completion. Vio is also heavily involved in the ebiz for media technical workgroup that is developing the schema for the digital insertion orders, which will also be circulated for industry comment. The core of the ebiz for media schema for print media advertising is AdsML, in which Vio also plays a leading role. “Vio is committed to making the secure exchange of digital insertion orders a reality, and quickly”, said Alan Darling, Executive VP of Vio. “We will make it easy for publishers to benefit from the AAAA’s ebiz for media initiative, and are delighted to be involved with this very important project. This initiative will help the industry free itself from the difficulties advertisers have in purchasing print media, by removing much of the unnecessary costs and wasted time associated with current processes.” “A digital advertising workflow is key to the competitiveness of print media in the future. The building block to streamlining the supply chain is standardization, enabling different systems to understand each other without having to re-key the same information. Making electronic insertion orders a reality is a great example of this. We appreciate Vio providing leadership and support to develop the specifications to automate our industry’s business processes,” said David Steinhardt, President and CEO of IDEAlliance. "We applaud the efforts of all the publishers and the technology suppliers, including Vio Worldwide, who are actively moving the AAAA’s ebiz for media initiative forward," added Anne Finn, Senior Vice President of the MPA (Magazine Publishers of America).