Antwerp, Belgium, 22 August 2003 -- The AdsML Standard — in development since the beginning of the year — was released for beta review this month, it was announced here today. AdsML 1.0, based on the widely-used eXtensible Markup Language (XML), is an international open standard that aims to streamline and automate the placement, transmittal, publishing and invoicing of advertisements. The process now is cumbersome, error-prone and unsuited to the rapid, fluctuating needs of a multimedia advertising environment. AdsML is designed to surmount present difficulties. “AdsML 1.0 is now in its outside review phase,” says John Iobst, vice chair of the Consortium Steering Committee and Technical Working Group member. “When the standard is released in October, the industry will have a tool that ties together the various processes that go into the lifecycle of an advertisement and facilitates communications between them. AdsML 1.0 utilizes existing standards that already address special niches within the industry and fills in gaps between standards that have impeded the seamless flow of vital information.” At present, advertising data can be re-keyed as often as 15 times per ad, according to a recent European study. Not only is this massively inefficient, but each time the data is re-entered, the opportunities for errors increase. AdsML 1.0 cuts data entry to one time only. The benefits to the industry will be significant — accelerated processing will shorten the time from insertion to publication, transactions will be more and more error-free and business opportunities will grow as ads are re-purposed across different advertising platforms. The beta review phase is the final stage of development before AdsML 1.0 is released for public consultation in October. The AdsML 1.0 specification and associated documentation is being circulated among industry and XML experts for evaluation and review in preparation for the public release of the AdsML 1.0 Proposed Specification at IfraExpo 2003 in Leipzig, Germany. Interested parties can get more information about the AdsML Consortium — and AdsML 1.0 — via the Internet at http://www.adsml.org/. The new standard is being developed by the AdsML Consortium, an international group of organizations and companies that serve the print, electronic and digital publishing industries. Among the Consortium’s supporters are Ifra, an international association for media publishing, and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) based in Vienna, Virginia, USA. A growing list of industry members include Agfa, Associated Newspapers, CCI Europe, Datox, Engage, IPA Systems, Iware, Media24, ppi Media, Quickcut, Rivcom, Rosetta and Vio Worldwide.