SendMyAd (www.sendmyad.com), the industry leading ad portal, hosted its first users meeting in New York. The event was hosted at the Time Inc.’s headquarters. More than 40 people from 20 companies attended the daylong meeting. SendMyAd planned the event in conjunction with representatives of Time Inc., Hachette Filipacchi Media U. S. and Meredith Corporation.
Keith Zibilich, COO of Blanchard Systems and SendMyAd, commenting on the meeting said, “The objective of the meeting was to establish a form for the interchange between SendMyAd and our customers. During the meeting we were able to learn from our users about their experience with SendMyAd and how their customers interact with the ad portal. We received a number of good suggestions on how to improve both the publisher and advertiser user experience. We also used the meeting as an opportunity to share a number of new developments with our customers such as support for web ads, on-line ad creation and job ticket enhancements. The input we received will be invaluable to the launch of these new products.”
A number of SendMyAd customers attending the meeting made the following to comments about the meeting:
Kin Wah Lam of Time Inc. said, “It was great to see so many users come together for the first ever SendMyAd Users Meeting here in NYC. The daylong event covered many topics, including some new enhancements from SendMyAd that will help align publishers around industry standards and best practices. By adopting industry wide standards related to XMP metadata exchange, SendMyAd promises to bring greater efficiencies for production departments. This technology could eventually create a bridge linking ad materials to electronic insertion orders.”
Bob Gibbons of North American Publishing Company said, “It was a good chance to see the current and future technology roadmap for SendMyAd. It’s exciting to see that SendMyAd is expanding beyond “print” in order to assist the publishing community with trafficking digital advertising. The ad creation tool within SendMyAd also has great promise.”
Steve Romeo of Hachette Filipacchi Media U S commented, “It is important for providers of critical solutions to listen to their customers. Blanchard is doing just that. We are looking forward to seeing the new developments to SendMyAd shown at the meeting in the near future. We see it as an opportunity to bring some valuable solutions to the table while knocking down the silos between print and digital production teams.”
Kelly Jerome, Meredith said, “The SendMyAd Users meeting was a great forum for publishers and other portal customers to exchange ideas and offer suggestions for future improvements. Our advertisers continue to provide positive feedback regarding their experience with the Meredith SendMyAd portal, and we appreciate BlanchardÕs willingness to listen, provide feedback and to make continuous improvements.”
Gary Garland, Magazines Canada stated, “The meeting provided a valuable opportunity to look forward, identify common industry needs and consider constructive solutions that meet publisher and advertiser realities. It was very worthwhile.”
SendMyAd plans on holding Users Meeting on a regular basis. It will also hold web-based meetings, in order to expand the number of participants.
The benefits of SendMyAd to magazine publishers are:
Extended sales period due to later closing date.
Less time processing ads by eliminating preflighting or cropping – ads are received ready to go into production.
No need to chase advertisers to correct ads received with errors.
Software as a Service makes it easy to start using SendMyAd with no involvement from your IT Department.
SendMyAd is a web based Software as a Service ad portal which is accessed using a standard web browser on any computer anywhere in the world to simplify the process of ad material submission to publishers. With SendMyAd, ad materials can be uploaded, preflighted, approved, and delivered to the publisher or their printer all within a simple to use web portal. It provides both the publisher and advertiser with an interactive preflight report highlighting the results of preflight tests performed against the publisher’s ad specifications. With an easy to use trim editing tool, ads can be repositioned and trimmed to fit the publisher’s ad specification without resubmitting or leaving the ad portal. SendMyAd creates a PDF/X-1a and retains all job ticket and history as metadata, which become a permanent part of the ad file. Finally, SendMyAd delivers the ad to the publisher, ready for placement in the magazine. The final ad and all related assets are stored on the SendMyAd portal for pickup in a later publication. SendMyAd provides the publisher with all the tools necessary to manage their ad production online.
Charles Blanchard, CEO of SendMyAd stated, “magazine publishers providing SendMyAd to their advertisers report productivity gains of up to 30%. In these economic times gains in productivity of this nature mean publishers can do more with less. In house resources can be devoted to other important tasks other than preflighting ads for print. Don’t forget the environmental impact of SendMyAd. For example the amount of proofing materials are reduced and the need for overnight courier services are eliminated.
The acceptance of SendMyAd by the publishing and advertising community has been overwhelming. With more than 500 magazines titles we are serving a diverse group of publishers from the largest media groups to sole proprietors. Advertisers tell us the SendMyAd user interface makes SendMyAd the easiest ad portal to use, Charles Blanchard went on to say.”