NCC, Donovan Streamline Ad-Buying
Collaborate on electronic system for cable spots
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/1/2009 4:41:28 PM
Cable interconnect National Cable Communications (NCC) and advertising software vendor Donovan Data Systems announced that they have teamed up to bring fully electronic order processing to the national spot cable ad marketplace, by integrating Donovan's Spot Desktop application with the NCC eBusiness sales system.NCC, which is jointly owned by Comcast Cable, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable and surpassed $1 billion in revenues in 2008, says the partnership with Donovan should improve order accuracy, speed and efficiency for NCC's ad agency clients. Based on the open XML standard, it will allow submitting, processing and confirming ad campaigns between NCC, its affiliates and Donovan agencies to become entirely electronic and paperless.
The system has already been live for four weeks and been used to process over $3 million worth of electronic orders from Donovan agencies.
"Integration with DDS' Spot Desktop application, which completely eliminates paper from the buy/sell process, represents one more way that NCC has made spot cable the easiest and most effective media for ad agencies to execute in all 210 markets across the United States," said NCC senior vice president, eBusiness Operations and Research, Nick Garramone, in a statement.
"The impact of this initiative is enormous," added Harvey Kent, chief media strategist at Donovan Data System, in a statement. "DDS agencies send orders containing more than 10 million spots to NCC every year. We anticipate that all local cable orders sent by DDS buyers will use the new service, representing hundreds of millions of dollars annually."
