PRE-PRINT ADS, ROP FIND NEW SLOTS ON WEB SITES

News, Inc. February 25, 2002

Here's a value-added concept: Repurpose newspaper ads and special sections on-line by taking the print product and converting it into a searchable web page.

AdExpedia Inc. of Chico, Calif., is doing just that with ad inserts from such major retailers as Meijer discount department stores, Michaels arts and crafts, Petco and Jo-Ann fabric stores. "Three years ago, we got a lot of strange looks because no one was doing it," says Paul Wolfe, AdExpedia's vice president of newspaper sales.

Now, those advertisers and five newspapers -- among them the San Francisco Chronicle and Dallas Morning News -- are using AdExpedia to vivisect their ad flyers, run-of-paper (ROP) ads and special sections, tie them to their markets on-line and escort the reader-shopper across the digital divide from static print to active web.

AdExpedia takes in production files from advertisers and papers in the Portable Document Format (PDF), then deploys people from its 52-person staff on day shifts (pre-prints) and night shifts (daily ROP) to examine the entries, decide how to divide up the content in a logical fashion, and assign the pieces into categories. AdExpedia also ensures that the proper versions of any national advertiser's pre-prints are posted in the right markets.

AdExpedia's own optical character recognition (OCR) software scans each ad, and words are tagged for use in web pages. For example, percent signs and dollar signs are found in text, then they and related text are gathered to create indexes to advertisers, products and categories based on price.

Once posted, an ad may remain on-line for seven days, in the case of Sunday circulars, or as long as a year for special sections. Hosted on AdExpedia's own servers, the page morsels are small enough (no larger than 50 kilobytes) to ensure a swift download over a dial-up connection.

Visitors to the newspaper's web site have a sizable box of digital tools to help get the most from the service, Wolfe explains in a guided tour of the Chronicle site, SFGate.com, whose AdExpedia pages carry the private label of Personal Shopper. Surfers can search all ads posted by word or phrase, they can click to see ads grouped by category or advertiser, and they can sign up to get e-mail alerts when a particular product is advertised on-line.

With a couple of clicks, they also can describe the shopping area they frequent, such as a commuter corridor between Sausalito and Santa Rosa. When presented with an ad, a shopper may click on one element in it to see a magnified view, which does not contain links to other web pages.

In order to draw readers, Wolfe says, the Dallas Morning News elected to upsell the web connection at a nominal fee, ensuring a critical mass of more than 400 advertisers on the site, which went live in October. The News also posts special sections which carry complete indexes by page to articles and advertisers; one click brings up the desired story or article and a second click displays the entire page. Articles are displayed one or two columns at a time to make reading easier.

"The consumer can do a lot of their research here and go right to the advertiser's web page, get driving directions, do a lot of different things here," Wolfe notes. "The difference with the on-line ad is that most of the people who are coming on-line are doing research and making buying decisions."

Advertisers who pay newspapers to distribute millions of pre-prints a week are discovering that AdExpedia facilitates greater distribution of exactly the same message without having to extend the press run, Wolfe says. Thanks to the "good audience" newspapers have on-line, he adds, "this is becoming a stand-alone medium."

-- P.W. From NEWSINC., Feb. 25, 2002, Copyright 2002, All Rights Reserved.

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