The advertising department of The Monroe Evening News marked the beginning of a new era on Jan. 29. It was the first day the southeastern Michigan publication used its Informatel AdPlus Advertising system.

The first phase of the project had Informatel install and maintain a completely integrated solution capable of allowing 10 users to work simultaneously. AdPlus Classified and AdPlacer modules are now online and being used by The Evening News. The third module of the system is Prism, Informatel’s Internet advertising management system, which should be live shortly.

The AdPlus classified ad order entry “All in One” screen comes with a number of data entry fields including a text editor (top, center), upselling option (left), publication calendar (bottom), and additional ad information (right).
Photo courtesy of Informatel

AdPlus is an ad order entry system for both line ads and classified display ads. It is ideally suited for cross-selling ads into multiple publications or products and capable of creating large legal ads and classified display ads with graphics and logos.

Because The Evening News (daily, 22,134; Sunday 25,096) is fully integrated, they can pass information back and forth between users and classified ad transfer at a very fast pace. AdPlus can accept classified display ads booked in their retail order entry system and merge these ads together.

AdPlacer is fully integrated with the AdPlus order entry system and can be used to sell ad position within a classification or page location. AdPlus automatically places display ads according to customers’ preferences and flows liner ads forwards or backwards in accordance with the newspaper’s requirements.

Informatel offers a completely integrated advertising solution for publishing companies, including classified and retail advertising, inserts, preprints and Internet advertising. The suite of applications includes a complete accounting and receivables application, a custom designed Target Marketing module and a customer relationship management module.

AdPlus comes with several tools that enable newspapers to potentially generate more revenue. On-screen prompts indicate the cost of running the ad additional times, adding extras, such as frames and logos, and running the ad in other publications or zones. The system has a proofing mechanism, enabling any ad taker to create more than one version of the same ad and indicate the cost of each version. Ad managers can target clients or new accounts and assign a contact list to each ad taker.

One of the most important roles of a newspaper’s advertising department is generating accurate and timely reports. These include revenue and sales reports by product, by sales rep, etc. Informatel offers a set of reports that are customized for every client. Users can create their own custom report whenever one is needed. A report scheduler allows any report to be scheduled after hours and delivered via e-mail.

The Monroe Evening News received a variety of features to improve its advertising department including a bi-directional interface for the paper’s accounting system, called Navision.

“Only certain client type ads are sent to the Navision system for billing. All others are billed through the AdPlus Accounting and Receivables system, said Ed Slattery, director of U.S. sales and marketing at Informatel. “The Navision system will send account status and client credit information to the AdPlus system. We also developed a custom data field, which enables Monroe Publishing to track special information that is not stored in any of the fields provided by AdPlus.”

The second phase of the project includes the installation of the Prism Internet advertising system that will allow clients to book classified ads on the Web.

“After analyzing eight different systems, we chose Informatel’s Prism because this specific software was developed as part of an integrated system dealing with all aspects of newspaper advertising,” said Trent Langton, production and systems manager at The Evening News. “It therefore preserves our investment if we want to replace some of the other software we are currently using. Another important reason is the excellent quality of customer service provided by Informatel. All of their existing clients we contacted were pretty clear about that. We are going to be in business with Informatel.”

According to André Paquette, president of Informatel, once Prism is installed, The Evening News will have an efficient way to post advertisements.

“With Prism, customers of The Monroe Evening News will have direct access through the Internet to write, edit and pay for their classified ads,” he said. It provides more flexibility, improves customer service with access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and reduces production costs.”

Ads booked on the Internet can be published in the print version of the paper or on its Web site. When an ad is booked through Prism, the customer will use a specially designed entry form to assist them through each step in the process. Ads with pictures or borders will be available by selecting a template and entering field data for each element. Ads will be correctly priced on entry and customers can select which publications they want the ad to run in and the number of insertions. Confirmation or questions can be e-mailed to the customer.