Newspapers don’t use paper just for printing the news of the day and for promotional mailings. They also use a considerable amount of paper for another purpose — distributing tearsheets.

Sending tearsheets to newspaper advertising customers involves mailing them copies of actual newspaper runs, which serve as proof that their ad ran as ordered.

Newspapers spend considerable time and money sending tearsheets. It’s a process that has been in place since the beginning of print advertising, and one that is rapidly changing due to database and Internet technology.

MerlinOne Inc. is one vendor offering a product designed to remove the need for mailing all that paper.

Based on PDF workflow, MerlinOne’s E-Sheets system is also designed for speed: Publishers can provide next-day tearsheets online. Customers are automatically e-mailed when their online tearsheets are ready and they see only the section of the paper where their ad ran, including the surrounding ads and editorial.

Bidding adieu to tradition

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant (daily, 190,312; Sunday, 285,068) had been following tradition until January 2003, sending out paper tearsheets to an average of 7,000 advertisers.

According to Chris Butler, imaging and quality assurance manager at The Courant, the paper made the shift to save money and make it easier for sales reps to keep track of their accounts. The software also helped the newspaper save time and storage space.

The paper explored a number of possibilities for building an in-house application, but determined that the software and hardware resources required would be too expensive and unwieldy.

Just as The Courant was starting serious vendor research, the daily’s managers received a request from parent Tribune Co. to wait six months.

Tribune was in the midst of launching a project with Knight Ridder and media planner Newspaper Services of America to standardize how the two publishers would manage ad delivery, proofing and tearsheets. After months of evaluations, MerlinOne received the contract.

Three-phase launch

“Once we received approval in June 2002, the project timeline was set for launch in four months,” said Butler. “The project had three basic phases. Phase one was to build and test the PDF and XML feeds to Merlin. Phase two was to roll out the system to a pilot group of 60 advertisers and market the system to the remaining advertisers. Phase three was to roll out to the remaining advertisers and stop sending paper.”

Slight modifications to the schedule were made, but the application was rolled out in four months, as dictated.

“We stopped sending out paper this past January and began a surcharge for those that required paper in March,” said Butler. “This gave our sales group the time they needed to convert holdouts to the new system. When the charges were instituted for paper delivery only a fraction of our customers were paying for tearsheets in the paper form.”

How it works

At The Courant, the system works by copying PostScript files from the newspaper’s Atex classifieds and CCI Europe editorial pagination system to a Windows-based distiller, upon which the PDFs are collected locally.

To create the XML file that tells MerlinOne exactly where and on which page the ad appears, scripts on the order entry, layout and pagination systems send various data feeds that populate a database.

This data is then combined into a single XML feed that is uploaded to MerlinOne via FTP along with a PDF from every page in the paper. That upload occurs at 3 a.m. every day.

Ads in the E-Sheets system can be searched by date, account, agency, ad number or page text content.
Photo: MerlinOne

Butler said by and large, advertisers have been receptive to the electronic tearsheets.

“There were a small number of accounts that did not initially want to use the system,” he said. “Several of these accounts had some technical reason, such as no Internet access, for not wanting to use it. The balance fell into a category of local advertisers that rely on national clearinghouses for co-op refunds and large booking agencies for national ad campaigns. Our ad sales department found that among this group the respective agencies had policies that restricted tearsheets to certain formats.”

Butler said that when the correct individual at a particular agency was contacted, the policy could be changed to accept the online version.

Knight Ridder’s St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press (daily, 189,994; Saturday, 170,111; Sunday, 251,956) also rolled out Merlin’s E-Sheets.

“I could see that the industry was on the verge of a shift,” said Anita Pope, technology project manager for the Pioneer Press.

“There were more and more companies that were offering electronic tearsheets. By virtue of being curious and wanting to embrace new technology, as well as realizing that there would be some cost savings for us, we decided to move forward and give it a try.”

Preparing advertisers

As with The Hartford Courant, the Pioneer Press rolled out the application in stages. Today, the paper is moving 10 percent of its advertisers from paper to electronic tearsheets each month.

The goal is to have approximately 80 percent of the tearsheet customer base transitioned to the online version by November, Pope said.

The paper prepared advertisers for the switch with a letter from the vice president of sales. A short time later, a sign-up card was sent along with the usual delivery of printed tearsheets to invite early participants to begin using the system.

Salespeople who delivered tearsheets by hand were also given promotional materials to use with the advertisers as part of the usual sales call.

Pope said the most challenging part of the install was getting good, clean XML out of systems that were already installed, in order to communicate with the MerlinOne software regarding where and on what page ads are placed.

Will be switching

Today, the newspaper uses the ALS layout and dummying system from Managing Editor Inc.; the daily plans to switch to Mactive Inc.’s AdBase in the near future.

“With the systems that we had, and probably with what most newspapers have, that (the export of XML) just wasn’t something that was readily available,” Pope said.

The Pioneer Press worked with MerlinOne to get a delimited file so XML files could be attached and read properly for its system.

“It was sort of a back-and-forth process to make sure that we were getting all of the fields properly recognized on both ends,” Pope said. “Once we got past that, it was really pretty easy, and even the XML issue wasn’t all that difficult.”

E-Sheets’ tracking capabilities has yielded other benefits for the newspaper as well, Pope said.

Sales reps can search back issues by date and account to track an ad campaign’s history.

Advertisers, meanwhile, see only their own accounts and no longer have to maintain paper records.

“The same process is in place with traditional tearsheets, but it’s cumbersome,” Pope said.

The Pioneer Press plans to keep at least three years of tearsheet records online, so the database will continually expand.