WASHINGTON, D.C., June 19 – Newspaper operations and classified advertising executives heralded the development of AdsML 1.0 and the coming release of AdsML 2.0 as the long-overdue “common language” that can open new markets for the advertising industry in today’s multiple-media environment. At a joint session here at NEXPO 2004, North America’s largest newspaper operations exhibition, an annual production of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the NAA Classified Conference, executives learned that classified advertising and newspaper prepress operations are the crucibles from which the international standard is emerging. The vocabularies of the e-business ‘language,’ while being designed first for those areas, ultimately will describe all types of advertising, across all media, irrespective of region or country. “We had to begin the design process in some part of the advertising industry,” said John Iobst, chair of the AdsML Consortium, the standard’s developer, and vice president, Technical Solutions in nearby Vienna, Va., “so we started with newspapers, but the standard is global and will meet the publishing and broadcast needs of any media. That includes magazines, radio, television, cellular, personal digital assistants (PDAs), even billboards, movie theaters and cinemas. In short, AdsML is designed to handle any communications technology that comes our way in the future.” Panelists tout pending benefits of AdsML 2.0 AdsML Consortium members presented information on the tangible benefits the AdsML envelope and the coming e-commerce standards will offer advertisers and publishers. Some of these benefits include better communications between trading partners and fewer errors, internal workflow improvements that accelerate the lead-time for getting an ad placed and published, and direct cost savings from reductions in labor and materials. In addition, attendees got an inside look at the developments that will be released next October in Amsterdam — digital booking formats, content exchange vehicle, and advertising content identification. "Across the advertising industry, we're about to see the day when our sales staff can sell instead of chase paper," said Allan Marshall, group technology director, Associated Newspapers Ltd., London, in an interview preceding the seminar. “We will also see a reduction in our billing and payment errors, as well as workflow overheads in our Accounting departments. The current complexities of getting an ad from print to Web to Mobile or PDA will be a dim memory. What we lacked till now was a universal way to communicate — ADsML changes that. It's hard to overstate the cost savings the standard’s implementation will produce, or the income-producing opportunities it will generate." About the AdsML Consortium and Its Partners The mission of the AdsML Consortium is to develop an open standard that will unify and extend existing advertising standards and automate advertising business processes — across all types of media, for all stages of the lifecycle of an advertisement, across all segments of the advertising industry, worldwide. It is supported by Ifra, a leading international association for newspaper and media publishing, and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), which represents more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. The Consortium’s strategic partners are Agfa and Associated Newspapers, Ltd. The Consortium’s members include a growing list of companies and organizations united to create a set of internationally-adopted specifications and business processes for the exchange of advertising information and content.