LOS
ANGELES, Calif. – Shoom Inc. announced today that five major metropolitan daily
newspapers in Canada recently went live with its iTearSheets electronic-tearsheet
system. The Web-based service
delivers thumbnail images of ads and entire newspapers on the day of
publication. CanWest
Publications Inc., a subsidiary of CanWest Global Communications Corp.,
publishes the five newspapers, six other major metropolitan dailies, and
more than 25 smaller dailies and weeklies in Canada.
CanWest
Publications began providing the service to its employees and major
advertisers in the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, The
Province (Vancouver), and the Vancouver Sun on January 1, 2003.
“We rolled it out with our large corporate advertisers and
multinational retailers first, and each newspaper has been introducing it
into its local marketplace as quickly as possible,” said Ron Clark, senior
vice president of CanWest Media Sales, which represents CanWest Publications
in advertising matters. “As
of January 1, advertisers with access to electronic tearsheets no longer
receive hardcopies unless a specific issue, such as the need to check a new
corporate color, warrants a request for them.
“iTearSheets
is a natural extension of electronic ad creation and delivery; it’s akin
to that kind of technology breakthrough,” said Clark.
“The service is a significant step forward in our relationship with
clients. For example, a
Toronto-based ad manager of a national retailer can now logon to
itearsheets.com, call up ads the company ran that day 3,000 miles away in
the Vancouver Sun, and see that the ads ran.
“But anyone
exposed to the system recognizes that its utility goes way beyond tearsheets,” he added.
“Some other benefits we didn’t see early on are proving to be
very powerful and have tremendous appeal to the advertiser.
For instance, if you’re in charge of national advertising for an
automobile manufacturer and see bigger and better competitors’ ads with
better offers that day, that kind of immediate competitive intelligence
wasn’t available prior to this service.
The ability to instantaneously track competitive offerings,
positioning, creative strategy, and activity is proving to be of real value
to advertisers.”
iTearSheets
users 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.
Both
publisher and advertiser accounting departments and the auditing firms
“are more than happy that we have this service,” said Phil Luckhoo,
business manager for CanWest Publications.
“Here, we have a huge amount of space allocated for paper
tearsheets and a couple of people who do nothing but attach them to invoices
all day. We invoice our largest
accounts every couple of days and we can invoice much quicker for these
first five newspapers with electronic tearsheets because we aren’t held up
waiting for hardcopies. If, in
turn, clients pay invoices earlier, interest earned on the money we capture
faster somewhat offsets the cost of the iTearSheets service.
Another cost justification is the reduction in courier and postage
fees. We anticipate a very
short payback on the system.
“On the
client side, some advertisers are seeing a couple thousand paper tearsheets
per month and have rooms full of them,” Luckhoo said.
Now, rather than peel through stacks and measure ads manually, they
can go online, key in our ad numbers, which take them directly to the
tearsheets, and measure ads with the sizing tool that gives exact
dimensions.”
Bill Freschi,
Shoom’s chief executive officer, said, “We
are very pleased to be providing
the electronic-tearsheet system for CanWest. We have worked with
many CanWest people over the last seven years, on both the newspaper-systems
and advertising sides of the business, and have the greatest respect for
their management team. They have suggested a great number of
innovative and useful changes and additions to the iTearSheets application
over the past year that, having been implemented, result in a much richer
product for both the advertising customer and those who use the product
internally. As more newspapers
join Shoom’s ever-expanding network, their advertisers will be able to
access tearsheets and review campaigns from a single ‘portal’.”
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Shoom Inc., together with its Ad Express subsidiary, develops and
markets Web-based solutions for publishers and advertisers worldwide. Based in Los Angeles, Calif., the company's team of marketing
professionals, database developers, and software engineers combines its
skills with proprietary development tools and modules to build
infrastructure software integrated with Web backend systems.
For more information, please visit our Web site at www.shoom.com
or contact us at sales@shoom.com or 800-446-6646.
CanWest
Global Communications Corp. (NYSE: CWG; TSE; CGS.S and CGS.A; www.canwestglobal.com
http://www.canwestglobal.com)
is an international media company. CanWest,
Canada’s largest publisher of daily newspapers, owns, operates and/or
holds substantial interests in newspapers, conventional television,
out-of-home advertising, specialty cable channels, and radio networks in
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and the United
Kingdom. The Company’s program production and distribution division
and interactive media division operate in several countries throughout the
world.
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