Creating and delivering ads to some of the largest newspaper names is no simple task, but one that was made easier for Boston-based ad agency Arnold Worldwide when it adopted Quickcut’s digital production workflow app to deliver print-ready ads last year.

Now, Arnold Worldwide is producing in-house many of the ads it previously farmed out to prepress providers.

“We’re producing them and sending them directly to the newspapers,” said Joe Gliottone, senior vice president and manager of print production for Arnold Worldwide.

Arnold Worldwide is also benefiting from Quickcut’s partnership - announced last year - with AP AdSend (See Newspapers & Technology, November 2005) in which Quickcut’s customer ad agencies worldwide can deliver ads to publications served by AP AdSend’s delivery network.

Transparent process

The process is transparent to the newspapers, largely because the use of Quickcut and AP AdSend eliminated some of the steps previously involved in the process.

“Before, when the prepress provider had created the finished high-res ads, they would send us a proof for final approval and then we would let them ship everything out to the publications,” Gliottone explained. “Quickcut has allowed us to create the high-resolution ads, preflight them, and then we ship everything out directly to the newspapers.”

The only thing Arnold is not doing in-house now is high-resolution scans and similar tasks, for which the agency still employs third-party prepress shops. Once approved, Arnold keeps those high-res image and creates PDF/X1a files from which the newspapers can print.

AP AdSend notifies Arnold when a newspaper receives its ad.

“Once we started doing that we found out it wasn’t as mystical as we thought it was going to be,” Gliottone said.

So far, Gliottone said Arnold has introduced the app to only a handful of its clients, but he’s hoping to roll it out even further.

Quickcut allows Arnold to create templates for the different newspapers in which his agency’s ads are being placed. The templates ensure elements such as correct ad size and correct specifications for a particular publication.

“It’s customized to our needs,” Gliottone said. “As we add more and more publications, we let Quickcut know that we’re adding these pubs and they update that [database].”

Working with AP AdSend has also opened up the international market for Arnold, Gliottone said.

“They have a pretty big list and it gives us additional opportunities because AP AdSend is being accepted internationally,” he said.

Arnold uses the time bonus received by using the service to double-check that materials are correct.

“We’ve assumed responsibility that what we send out to these publications is correct and we want to make sure we have reaction time so that if something we’ve sent out is wrong, we have time to fix it and send it,” Gliottone said.

The times are ‘a changin’

Gliottone said he is seeing that newspapers are becoming increasingly willing to accept digital ad delivery.

“I think AdSend was one of the first things that was accepted and really kind of revolutionized sending ads because you weren’t necessarily waiting for someone to have an FTP site that you could send it to, or you weren’t sending it via e-mail with fingers crossed that it was going to arrive without something changing,” he said. “With PDF/X1a you’re pretty much certain that nothing’s changed.”

The benefit of time that electronic delivery has afforded has also meant the agency is no longer at the mercy of unknowns like the weather and last-minute clients.