The Buffalo (N.Y.) News is shuffling off its old way of distributing tearsheets.

The newspaper (daily, 223,957; Sunday, 306,102) is rolling out an electronic tearsheets application developed by Graphic Enterprises Inc.

The News deployed GEI’s Electronic Tearsheets Server software in April, following a 14-month trial.

Julie Hill, Novus Print Media’s financial services manager said all of its clients use electronic tearsheets to see their advertisements immediately after the drop date.
Photo: Graphic Enterprises Inc.

The password-secure Electronic Tearsheet Server software allows clients to view their advertisement on a standard Web browser on the day of publication.

News Prepress Manager Bill Marzahn said the newspaper explored using electronic tearsheets for more than 30 months before hearing about GEI’s application at a user’s group meeting in 2001.

“GEI asked for ideas on the who, what, when, where and hows of e-tearsheets,” he said. “We responded and [GEI] asked if we would be interested in becoming a beta site for their e-tearsheet venture.”

In June 2002, The News began offering tearsheets online. Today, 12 advertising clients use the software, including two agencies that represent seven additional advertisers.

The advent of electronic tearsheets comes as newspapers attempt to find new and more convenient ways to prove to advertisers that their ads were published as promised.

Despite the blanket of digitization that covers many newspaper operations, most dailies still resort to the manual process of mailing hard-copy tearsheets to their advertisers.

That’s an expensive approach; yet without proof of publication, many advertisers are unwilling to pay.

Use Web to view ads

GEI’s application allows advertisers to use a Web browser to view their ads, either as PDF or JPEG images, on the day of publication.

The software imports the daily’s ad stack and then links up the ads with their respective account and invoice information.

Billing information is displayed either as a PDF or as an HTML file linking each line item to a corresponding tearsheet.

Advertisers are notified via e-mail when a new tearsheet is available; they then log onto a password-secure Web site to access the material. The ads can be measured and viewing tools are available to enable users to zoom in or out and perform searches. Clients can also see what other copy ran on pages surrounding the ad and even “flip” the page over to see if a coupon ran behind it.

Archiving ability

In addition to generating electronic tearsheets, the GEI application maintains a thumbnail gallery of each day’s publications, providing a digital archive of each issue. The archive can be cross-referenced and searched by metadata imported into the software.

The News manages the application in-house, but Electronic Tearsheets is also offered as a hosted option, GEI said. The application can be customized as needed.

“We wanted to have control of our administration with a secure, in-house solution,” said Marzahn. “The technology will provide exactly what we and our advertisers need. We now expect our salespeople to actively use our new digital tearsheet service as a valuable selling tool.”

Ad agencies on board

As The News began using the application, the newspaper noticed that some advertisers began to demand other publishers begin distributing tearsheets online.

National ad agency and News client Novus Print Media, for example, requires an electronic tearsheet before it will invoice clients; the firm said it’s been pushing publications to provide digital tearsheets for two years.

“Many publishers believe wrongly that their clients will not accept electronic tearsheets, however our large client base strongly approves of them,” said Julie Hill, Novus Print Media’s financial services manager. “All of our clients want to see their advertisements immediately after the drop date. In addition, they don’t need to spend the time and resources sorting through mountains of tearsheets in order to reconcile their billings.”

Additionally, Hill said, digital tearsheets help Novus store and share the documents among its offices. This allows all the people needed to approve the tearsheet to view the same information on the Web at the same time.

Finally, electronic tearsheets lets Novus bill clients, receive payment and pay the publication running the ad more quickly.

“It’s a win-win for all parties, and helps us strengthen our relationships with those publications,” she said.