Prepress
NICHE MEDIA LAUNCHES SENDMYAD TO ITS ADVERTISERS
Wednesday 16. April 2008 - Publisher of successful lifestyle magazines to provide an attractive, easy to use ad portal for its advertisers, while building a powerful, automated production backbone.
Niche Media has launched SendMyAd to its advertisers. The all-in-one ad service portal allows its advertisers to save time and money by leveraging the power of the web and supply chain management to link ad material submission and placement in one centralized ad portal. It is the first end-to-end solution that provides an easy to use personalized site where advertisers can submit, approve, and deliver advertising materials and corresponding insertion order data to their publishers.
Niche Media Holdings, LLC is the country’s pre-eminent regional magazine group catering to the high-end luxury market through its distinct publications which cover the entire eastern seacoast from Boston to Miami (including Atlanta Peach, Boston Common, Capitol File, Gotham, and Hamptons-which is considered the largest weekly publication in the US) and many major cities throughout the rest of the U.S. (including Vegas, Aspen Peak, Los Angeles Confidential, and the soon to be released Michigan Avenue). Renowned for reaching the most affluent consumers, the pages of these upscale glossies are some of the most valuable real estate in the country. By celebrating the worlds of culture, fashion, fine dining, real estate, and nightlife, the magazines consistently deliver the finest editorial and advertising to a controlled group of influencers with the highest disposable incomes in each city.
The ad portal Niche originally installed preflighted ad files, but not live, in front of the advertiser. “”If you were an art director, and sent an ad, the system basically said: ‘We have your ad’,” recalls Shawn Lowe, Director of manufacturing in the digital imaging area. “But, what if you had five jobs on your desk and you’re told, later, ‘Your ad failed’? The art director had no idea of what ad failed or why it failed. We ultimately had to answer a lot of questions and had to pay for multiple uploads.”
“We came to the conclusion that, while the process should have been a no-brainer-like delivering a CD with a proof-it was taking too much time from our staff and confusing our advertisers,” adds Lowe. Niche Media wanted to eliminate a lot of unnecessary work-customer support, answering queries, and resolving issues-associated with the original system.
“A system should respond quickly, precisely, efficiently and with courtesy for the person sending an ad file. That’s what I saw with SendMyAd,” explains Lowe. “At first sight I thought it was far more pleasing to the eye, just like an Apple application-a common look and a great feel. If you’re an art director and upload to the system, the system preflights for you, identifies any problem if one exists, you see the problem, fix it, and approve the file. Then, as a publisher, I know I can approve it.”
Upstream, SendMyAd also integrates with external ad booking systems to receive ad insertion orders automatically. For example, when Niche Media’s inside sales assistant receives an order for an ad in Gotham, the sales rep can reserve a spot in DataTrax (Niche’s ad booking system). The ad portal will receive a message for the newly created insertion order and send an email message to the advertiser with a link inviting them to upload the ad materials into the SendMyAd ad portal. Once the ad materials are received, the ad portal automatically takes it from there, preflighting the ad and alerting the advertiser if any issues are found that need their attention or approval. As soon as all the stakeholders approve the ad materials and the insertion information, the ad is delivered to the publication or to the printer automatically and an alert email message is sent out, notifying the recipient that materials have arrived. “The agency can do the work rather than me,” explains Lowe. “We’re looking to place 15-20,000 ads per year, but with SendMyAd, even though we have tripled our ad pages due to recent acquisitions, we will not have to add more than one or two people to our staff.”
Currently, Niche works closely with Brown Printing, whose b.Direct production system-based on DALiM MiSTRAL-allows Niche to see and plan their books over the web in a flatplan view. Down the road, because of the close relationship between Blanchard Systems, Dalim Software, and SendMyAd, Niche expects to drop ads that are delivered to them directly into b.Direct, without intervention. “We expect the system will significantly streamline the process from the time an ad file is delivered. My staff will no longer have to go get a PDF from the ftp folder and place it into QuarkXPress or InDesign, distill it to a PDF/X-1a file and send it into our softproofing solution. We hope to be able to avoid these manual steps on thousands of ads within the next 6 months,” remarks Lowe. “A portal should be cost-efficient, enjoyable, informative and effortless. I want everyone to say that Niche has the best portal, with features like file editing and instant messaging with a sales assistants-for example, to request an extension.” Our business is all about communication- from the beginning to the end.
“I can usually tell when I see something revolutionary. Two years ago, I was correct to provide an ad portal for our ad submission process, but the service I originally subscribed to only lets ads go through our system, and nothing else. Now, along with SendMyAd’s support, this ad portal is five steps up from anything I have ever seen. I want, and I expect, that our advertisers will be impressed and say it’s truly unbelievable. Ultimately, I want them to enjoy uploading their ads to our magazines. Really, when it comes down to it, I only want the best system for our clients, and this is it,” concludes Lowe.