Prepress
SPECLE.NET – THE NEW INDUSTRY RESOURCE FOR REALTIME AD SPECIFICATIONS
Wednesday 04. November 2009 - Central technical information portal for publishers, advertisers and agencies; set to transform the way the industry manages, validates, and communicates advertising specifications
Specle Ltd has chosen mediaPro 2009 for the official UK launch of its new advertising specification database and industry resource, www.specle.net, and its new workflow tool, SpecleCreate to the UK advertising and publishing industries. The introduction of specle.net and SpecleCreate to the UK market is the second stage in a 12-month Europe-wide roll-out which began in Benelux in February 2009, where it is now being used by over 95 percent of publishers.
Says Tom Beckenham, managing director, Specle Ltd: “specle.net is the new way for publishers to present ad specifications online. It gives them the ability to easily and graphically display technical requirements so creative agencies and advertisers can quickly select and validate magazine or newspaper ad sizes and other technical information in realtime from a central online portal – driving significant cost out of the ad production process.
“With Specle, publishers can now clearly communicate information that was previously complex to explain, and near impossible to keep up-to-date. One of the core aims of this comprehensive database is to quite simply take the pain and cost out of the ad specification process for both publishers and agencies. An agency coming to specle.net can now use the search facility to search for any ad spec they are looking for in the knowledge that the information is entered and validated by the publishers themselves.
“We have already secured the support of the majority of the UKs national newspaper groups and some of the countrys biggest magazine publishers including BBC Magazines. Guardian News and Media and Trinity Mirror have signed up on an exclusive basis and have transferred all their respective advertising technical specifications onto www.specle.net,” continues Tom. “Specle has already built a database of 1000s of publications and is rapidly becoming the central resource to find any ad spec online.”
Beckenham, who is also co-chair of Job Ticketing for the Ghent PDF Workgroup, says having such an impressive range of respected publishers already on the database as the site goes live is “a major achievement and a reflection of the strength of this concept. Publishers have liked the fact that they have their own personalised URL on Specles central database where they can upload all their technical specifications rather than having to host it themselves and that all this information is available in realtime for agencies and advertisers to access. From an advertisers perspective, having a large number of the UK publishing industrys ad technical specifications in one place is a major benefit, which will help agencies to ensure ad creation and processing is as efficient as possible.”
A new workflow tool – SpecleCreate
In addition to the launch of specle.net, the company is also introducing its new workflow solution, SpecleCreate to the market. SpecleCreate is a pioneering new production tool that allows advertisers, creative agencies and prepress providers to prepare advertisements to publisher specification then distribute to the publisher with ease. Working in Adobe InDesign, SpecleCreate helps operators prepare ad layouts to the exact page size required by publishers and as SpecleCreate is employed very early on in the workflow and its delivery method “agnostic”, it ensures that every ad is created to the publishers correct specification before it is exported for pre-flighting.
SpecleCreate has been developed in close co-operation with some of the key players in the international advertising industry and is already being used by creative and advertising agencies to create and distribute advertisements. Beckenham believes SpecleCreate will dramatically increase efficiency in the ad production and distribution process as it automates many of the creation and distribution functions: “This new workflow tool is currently the fastest way to enter industry-standard GWG Ad Tickets in XMP for example,” continues Beckenham.
SpecleCreate has a one click page sizing function which sets the trim and bleed to exact publication requirements in InDesign and an error-free PDF export function which automatically sets complicated PDF export settings to the correct requirements for each newspaper or magazine. SpecleCreates Easy Ad job ticketing system then effortlessly stores all the important ad information inside InDesign and PDF files as XMP in the GWG Ad Tickets, so wherever the ad goes, its vital technical information goes too. Both specle.net and SpecleCreate have been developed to save publishers and agencies administrative and processing time and the costs associated with this – which is fundamental to creating a more efficient and competitive advertising industry.
“We believe this database will quickly become an industry standard as it gives agencies and advertisers world-wide direct links to what will soon be almost all major publishers in the UK. And, as the site is clearly presented and easily navigated, agencies can find the technical specifications they need in a fraction of the time they currently do. The feedback we have received so far from both publishers and agencies has been outstanding. Given our success to date, were confident that we will have well over 90 percent of the UKs publishing houses on board within the next few months,” concludes Mr Beckenham.