Vienna, Va., USA. 19 April 2004 – The release of AdsML 2.0 in October 2004 will provide the advertising industry with classified ad content that is searchable, advertisement styling standards that facilitate multiple media usage and a vehicle for advertisers to exchange electronic business documents directly with newspapers.
These are the expected outcomes from collaborative efforts now underway between a broad spectrum of industry organizations working with the AdsML Consortium. Representatives from such companies as Accord Holdings Ltd., AdStar Inc., CNet Svenska AB, and Iware SA (Publigroupe) are teaming with the IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) and Consortium co-sponsors Ifra and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). Together they are designing content and styling standards to produce both operational efficiencies and new business opportunities for all segments of the advertising industry.
“With the AdsML Standard, the industry will be able to expand revenue streams and leverage the unique opportunities e-commerce and cross-media advertising allow,” says Eli Rousso, chief information officer of AdStar Inc., a leading provider of e-commerce transaction software and services for the advertising and publishing industries.
Four classified categories to be defined first
The first areas of classified advertising for which model vocabularies will be developed are housing, recruitment, transportation and travel. Although drafted for classified ads at this point, these vocabularies ultimately will apply to any advertisement, regardless of ad type or designated media. The vocabularies will build on and expand the information contained in the North American standard, CRESTTM 2.0.
Hand-in-hand with this effort, a cross-media styling language specific to classified ads will be created. A defined set of element tags will identify the types of information that commonly appear in classified advertisements — such as headers, paragraph and line breaks, boxes, advertiser name, blind box numbers, and referenced photos. A mechanism to match the types of styling requested with the tagged information is included in the development process.
“AdsML’s projects on content description and styling for classified display and liner ads address important aspects in the area of exchange and re-purposing of ads,” says Ulf Wingstedt, technical manager and co-founder of CNet Svenska AB, a Swedish software supplier to media and content industry. “Results from these projects will vastly improve the ability of media houses and content owners to create new services and offerings.”
Christian Rohrbach of Iware concurs. “The proposed standard will be able to capture the needs of the market as it moves forward, integrating new types of objects as defined by those involved. The new categorization structures will give parties the flexibility to organize their data, for various media, and will allow better access [to it]. This approach gives publishers the ability to handle vertical publications as well as aggregated content forms.”
Suite of standards will ease AdsML implementation
These standards-writing efforts constitute two components of a suite of standards being developed for the AdsML Specification. The full suite will be released as AdsML 2.0 in Amsterdam at IfraExpo in the fall. Classified ads were identified by Consortium members as an ad type for which international standardization is important and which will benefit greatly from increased computerization.
“In the future, the development of specifications that are cross-industry will be a key factor in achieving broad based implementation, particularly since companies are demanding one specification to serve multiple business segments,” says IDEAlliance President and CEO David J. Steinhardt. “IDEAlliance is taking a leadership role with NAA to engage interested parties, in e-commerce specification development that will maximize expert resources and improve cost efficiencies. The end result will be to generate consensus, increase implementation and promulgate the specifications as industry standards.”
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 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. Among them are ABB, Accord Holdings Ltd., AdStar, Agfa, Associated Newspapers, CCI Europe, CNet Svenska AB, Cyber UK, Iware (Publigroupe), PCS, PPI, Quickcut, RivCom, Rosetta, Roularta Media Group and Vio Worldwide.
The IDEAlliance is an international membership organization formed to help members apply the latest computer-related technologies to all forms of print and electronic publishing. It offers those who create, produce, manage and deliver content to interface with those who develop the software tools that facilitate these functions. The IDEAlliance is active in the development of XML standards for the industry.
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