Newspapers aren’t only competing with minimalist Craigslist when it comes to online classifieds. They are also competing with sites like eBay, which offer ads that are highly visual and often come with features like “Buy Me Now.”

Bottom line? It can be a daunting task for newspapers to program that level of interactivity into their online classifieds from scratch.

One potential tool newspapers are deploying to overcome that limitation is AdMission Classifieds, developed by San Ramon, Calif.-based AdMission Corp.

The app gives classified ad sales staffs the ability to offer marketers the chance to spruce up their ads, adding such attributes as photos, e-commerce and other capabilities.

All the purchaser has to do is submit photos, activate the e-commerce features and, if desired, bolster the text.

Most of the processing occurs on the server side (see diagram) of the hosted app, reducing the load on the user’s browser and permitting faster uploads.

Cox rolling out

One publisher that has embraced AdMission is Cox Newspapers Inc.

Two Cox-owned newspapers, the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, rolled out an earlier version of AdMission’s software, (when the firm was known as iPix) in 2002 and 2003, respectively.

Earlier this summer, Cox extended its use of AdMission, saying it would deploy the app throughout 18 additional papers by the end of this year.

“Users are basically expecting us to have this kind of technology, said Tom Linehan, online business manager at the American-Statesman, “because they’re finding it elsewhere.”  

The daily upgraded to AdMission earlier this year after using an older version of the vendor’s software.

“They came to us with this new AdMission product, and said they could set it up so we could offer this e-commerce type of functionality,” Linehan said. “This lets the customer immediately buy the product using Paypal, so we said, ‘Sure, we’ll take that.’”

From Web to phone

Initially, the Statesman chose to offer AdMission’s enhanced photo capabilities only through a Web site interface.

As the app became more sophisticated, the paper was able to offer the upgrades through its own classified ad salespeople, according to Linehan.

 “That way when a customer calls in, the customer service person can offer to upsell additional photos online,” he said. “We do that by giving the customer their order number, and a URL that they can go to with their Web browser to start the process.”

Click to enlarge image
This graphic shows how ad data is passed back and forth between AdMission servers and various other components in the production process.
Graphic: AdMission

To ensure smooth integration with the American-Statesman’s online classified software, that URL is hosted at the paper but it contains the AdMission “image wells,” where photos can be dragged and dropped. Customers can also perform any cropping or resizing as necessary.

“There’s no question about it, Craigslist is certainly pushing us as well as other newspapers to offer enhancements,” Linehan said. “It used to be that adding photos to an ad was an ordeal, especially for the user, with having to scan in photos, choosing what format to save it in, all that stuff.”

Those days, at least for the American-Statesman’s classified advertisers, are over.