The Plain Dealer launched its Internet-based digital tearsheet service on Sept. 7, 2001, to give advertisers and employees high-speed online access to ads, as well as the entire newspaper, on the day of publication. At the time, I had no idea how many people’s lives it would touch for the better.

Our production center prints 100 fewer newspapers daily for tearsheets, and the advertising and accounting departments no longer have newspapers in case an advertiser needs to see an ad. One tearsheet-department employee retired and was not replaced because requests for paper tearsheets keep dropping. At year-end 2002, 600 advertisers had signed up for the electronic service, and I anticipate this number to grow. There are, and will continue to be, advertisers who want an occasional hardcopy tearsheet to check quality, and others who might not yet be using the Internet.

Budget-minded executives are happier because we offset the online service cost in delivery savings alone. It eliminates the worst part of advertising salespeople’s jobs, that of filling out tearsheet-request forms, stuffing envelopes, and mailing not only tearsheets, but also entire newspapers or sections as marketing tools. They often ask our couriers to dispatch them all over the city.

Advertisers no longer must wait for paper tearsheets and then store them while awaiting invoices to match up with ads. Now, they can go online to see their ads and browse the newspaper for competitors’ ads on the day of publication .

In spring 2001, simultaneous events propelled The Plain Dealer into digital tearsheets. Alex Machaskee, president and publisher, attended a conference where he learned of cost savings of using electronic tearsheets and returned with a mandate to implement them. The NAA Digital Tearsheet Committee, on which I serve, published survey results that outlined the ideal system. Coincidentally, a sales team from Shoom Inc. in Los Angeles called on me and demonstrated its iTearSheets application, which had all the features of the ideal system specified in the NAA committee report. Five years previously, Shoom had conducted its own survey of publishers and advertisers and had developed its system accordingly. By August, our publisher and the advertising, accounting and information-systems departments had decided that The Plain Dealer should subscribe to the iTearSheets service. We went live with the system within three weeks, because we had known for a couple of years that we would eventually implement such a program and had been preparing for it.

Creation of digital tearsheets starts here at the newspaper, where we capture advertising data and newspaper pages digitally and transmit them to Shoom. It validates, processes, posts and archives them on its World Wide Web site.

The system makes complete newspaper contents available by creating thumbnail images, which are true digital representations of newspaper pages as they were published. It tags the files with codes to make them accessible by keyword search and sends e-mail notifications to advertisers with a URL link to their account-summary pages. From the summary pages, users can access ad pages directly to review them for quality, measure ads with a diagonal click and drag of the mouse, and compare them against insertion orders.

System users also can access iTearSheets from itearsheets.com, where they can browse either the entire newspaper or by ad criteria. They can choose a specific publication or all listed publications, select a date range and zone, and search by agency, advertiser, ad-insertion number and description or keyword. The system cross-links publications and differentiates and integrates advertiser divisions and agencies. Search results display ad insertion data and thumbnail views of pages, which can be clicked to open or download. Users can magnify, crop and resize pages. When they measure ads with a diagonal click and drag of the mouse, a pop-up window appears with column size and depth in inches and lines. Co-op advertisers find this intelligent ad-measuring tool helpful.

Today, advertisers who subscribe to digital tearsheet services must deal with vendors’ and newspapers’ dissimilar proprietary systems and visit diverse Web sites to access ads. To make the task less cumbersome for advertisers, the NAA committee recommends a standard service format that would apply to elements such as file type, attached information, metadata, image-data tags, fields and field names. The committee also would like to see a super search engine that would make all vendor and newspaper services available from one site. Ultimately, the success of this technology depends upon advertiser acceptance and satisfaction.