By Tara McMeekin
Associate Editor

When the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel went live Aug. 21, 2001 on Mactive Inc.’s AdBase system, the staff had more to be happy about than just the new advertising system.

“We met the go-live date from our initial plan, we were within budget, and we got everything we wanted,” said Kevin Burke, application systems director for the newspaper.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (daily, 255,098; Saturday, 247,118; Sunday, 455,862) spent the first part of 2000 analyzing classified systems before coming to a unanimous decision to go with AdBase in September 2000. The newspaper then went through an extensive requirements analysis with Mactive and installation commenced in January 2001.

Currently, the Journal-Sentinel is running the classified front-end and page layout modules of AdBase, with plans to bring the rest of the system online by July 1, 2002.

Katie Ryan, one of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s 
classified sales staff members, is up and running 
with AdBase.
Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“We have just kicked off the project here [recently] to put the retail display, or ROP order entry piece in — which, in reality, in Mactive is the same system, we just need to configure it to do that — and a product called Money Manager, which is the accounts receivable side,” Burke said.

AdBase is a graphical user interface front end that looks similar to Microsoft Word or Excel, including the same features and functionality.

“We have very extensive account management features involved with searches and information about our accounts and contract management. We add and maintain accounts on that database and maintain contracts on that database. Then we place all our ads there, which do dynamic rating, dynamic hyphenation and justification,” Burke said. “We have the true WYSIWYG capability and basically that same database is what feeds our pagination system.”

The Journal-Sentinel’s database is completely integrated and functions in real time.

“All of the information is updated literally the minute it hits the system,” Burke said.

The newspaper has numerous interfaces coming into the system. The Journal-Sentinel is doing electronic feeds with e-mail cut-and-paste ads. The paper also has a database of logos, pictures and other graphics, so an ad taker can make up a classified ad right on their desktop. Display ads are still made up in the creative department and use a separate interface.

The classified department uses PCs and display ads are created on Macintosh computers using QuarkXPress and other software. After creation, display ads go into an open prepress interface and can then be called into the Mactive system. Supplied ads end up on the OPI as well, where they are loaded for storage. When it’s time for production, everything is called up from the OPI.

“This system is by far the best one we’ve seen out there,” Burke said. “Mactive has a philosophy that an ad is an ad no matter what … and we’ve even used this product to run employment TV ads, where you run them as a TV spot duration.”

Carol Duncan of Mactive trains Carl Howard on the 
PageLayout module of AdBase at The Courier-Post 
in Cherry Hill, N.J., which also recently installed AdBase. Duncan was also part of the go-live team at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

It seems the Journal-Sentinel is reaping the benefits of all of the features of the new advertising system, including increased revenues.

“We are making more revenue off of the upsell opportunities, the messaging capability with the sales reps, just all in all, there are a lot of opportunities to use the features and functionalities of the system,” Burke added.

The Mactive system provides Web functionality, which the Journal-Sentinel is also working with. They are installing a Web front end that will initially be a transient advertiser to directly input classifieds into the system so customers don’t ever have to deal with a sales rep. This will be a useful tool for the newspaper, which currently takes anywhere from 500 classified ads early in the week to nearly 5,000 towards week’s end. Eventually, newspaper customers will be able to make payments and manage their advertising accounts on the Web as well.

The Journal-Sentinel is already taking ads out of the Mactive system and displaying them on the Internet for viewing purposes.

Easy as pie

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has been exceptionally pleased with the ease of use the AdBase system provides.

“I took a couple of the executives out on the floor right after we went live and they were standing behind a younger person who was taking some ads and she was literally just flying through the screen,” Burke said. “A question was asked: ‘How long has she been here?’ The answer was two days. Because it was like a regular Microsoft environment, she did not need to learn any of that. We were also able to control the system where it set up a lot of defaults for her, so all she had to do was take the text and schedule the ad.”

The AdBase system handles all of the rating and justification for an ad.

“Our training time or learning curve has gone way down,” Burke added.

Reporting tools

The AdBase system features the Data Analysis Reporting Tool. DART lets users select criteria to produce an online report. Sales reps can use DART to track their goals and progress by continually running a query.

“It’s a great management reporting tool. They can see exactly where to put resources to generate more revenue,” Burke said.

Burke admits the Journal-Sentinel is often too busy to use the reporting capabilities as much as they’d like.

“You could get by and do it every day or you could do it once a week and have projections,” he said. “It’s just with the volume of ads coming in — on a Friday when we’re taking 5,000 ads — that number changes pretty quickly.”

Getting on board

There will initially be about 20 users on the system for display ads at the Journal-Sentinel and when the entire sales force module comes online there will be another 80 users. All of the users will be brought on board in a couple of phases. The accounts receivable module of AdBase will be online by January 2003 for display and classified ads.

“One of the unique features is it shares the database, so it’s the same account information within the database,” Burke said. “There’s a module to put the ad in and there’s a module to do the receivables — billing, payments, etc. — but it’s still the same database and the same account and again, it’s all in real time.”

Training on the AdBase system was done with the newspaper staff on site and in Melbourne, Fla., where Mactive is based.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did a set-up guide and workshop booklet, and a project manager from Mactive came on-site to help with that. Following that, the Journal-Sentinel sent staff to Melbourne for three weeks to train on the initial configuration of the system. Then the AdBase system was shipped to Milwaukee and a project team from Mactive was on-site every other week for the duration of the project.

“What [being in Florida] ultimately accomplished was figuring out how we’d set up our current environment to go live,” Burke said.

As the project neared completion, the Mactive team was on site every week to help with the install, interfaces, testing, configuration, training and go-live support.

Mactive will continue to do training with the Journal-Sentinel staff until all remaining features of the system are brought online. The next phase of the installation will consist of 10 people on the core team and the functional experts for each of the areas, which could total up to 20 additional people.

“It has been a fun project. It’s had its moments of tension, but when we went live we knew it was the right thing to do. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind,” Burke said.

Mactive recently announced that the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., signed a contract for a 48-seat AdBase system for classified, ROP and display ad order entry, classified pagination and ad dummying. The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer has also signed a contract for the AdBase system.