Founded in 1987, AD/SAT was the victim of a variety of problems, ranging from being part of Robert Maxwell's Macmillian Inc. to being saddled with 1987 technology.

Following Maxwell's death in 1991, a group of former Maxwell and Macmillian executives formed a company called Skylight Inc., which purchased AD/SAT in May 1994.

In September 1994, AD/SAT filed suit against the Associated Press, which was within days of introducing its ad delivery technology, AP AdSEND.

Though both AdSEND and AD/SAT used the same satellites to transmit display advertising, the two technologies were dramatically different.

AD/SAT was based on the notion -- quite accurate in 1987 -- that advertisers needed reflective copy delivered quickly to newspapers. The system used high-resolution facsimile transmission from AD/SAT offices in New York or Los Angeles to newspapers that had purchased a satellite receiving system and an output device.

AD/SAT contracted with the AP to provide the satellite bandwidth and to maintain the equipment.

Though AD/SAT management provided advertisers with extraordinary customer support and had begun to assimilate newer technologies into its distribution system, the main problem was that the business model required newspapers to buy a lot of equipment and advertisers to spend a lot of money for transmissions.

As desktop publishing became more prevalent, advertisers frequently had a digital file to send to newspapers; conversely, many newspapers had ambitions of becoming paginated and wanted not reflective copy but a digital file that could be placed in a pagination system.

The AP AdSEND system caters to those newer desires: Advertisers deliver a file that's been processed with Acrobat Distiller from Adobe Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

The AdSEND system transmits the Portable Document Format (PDF) file to the newspapers the advertiser wants; the newspaper can either output the PDF file for paste-up or place it into a pagination system.

The AP saw its main competitor as not AD/SAT but Federal Express and other parcel services, who deliver a vast quantity of regional and national display advertising reflective copy. The news cooperative priced its services more along the lines of the overnight delivery services.

AD/SAT's antitrust lawyer, Daniel Shulman of Minneapolis, told an AP reporter, "AdSEND put them out of business. They lost a lot of newspapers and were not able to keep advertisers and grow."

He said AD/SAT would file an appeal.

White, the longtime Camex marketing executive who went to work for DuPont when it acquired the display ad makeup system supplier, has been developing an ad transmission system in the 18 months since DuPont shut down its publishing systems division.

Unveiled at Seybold Boston, AdDirect is a Macintosh-based client program that newspapers can freely distribute to advertisers. It walks the retailer or agency through the sending process in easy-to-follow steps. The program then dials the newspaper over a regular modem or Isdn line and dumps the ad.

At the newspaper end is AdHandler, which is in fact two computers -- a Pentium running the UNIX variant Linux, and a Macintosh.

The Pentium can handle up to eight serial devices -- modems or Isdn cards, or a mixture. The software on the Pentium captures the ad, saves it to a predetermined place (which can be configurable depending upon variables) and will even send e-mail to an individual or a group announcing the ad's arrival.

The newspaper is even isolated from the rigors of Linux by virtue of the configuration software that runs on the Mac and executes the newspaper's desires in the messy world of UNIX.

The hardware at the newspaper end is relatively cheap -- if the paper provides its own Macintosh, the AdHandler system runs about $3400.

ACI, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., charges advertisers between $2 and $5 an ad for transmission, depending upon volume.

ADS -- Artwork Delivery System -- is based on Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and not only allows embedded fonts (to ensure proper reproduction) but also provides a minimal amount of publication data.

The format was developed by 4-Sight and the UK Mail, a division of Associated Newspapers in London.

4-Sight, whose U.S. product portfolio until now has been limited to Isdn cards and fax servers, is building a team in the U.S. to market and support the product. Following a comment made at a Seybold Boston session, the company publicly announced its entry into the U.S. market in late March.

4-Sight LC, (515) 221-3005; Advertising Communications International Inc., (617) 499-0880.

-- dmc

See also: Digital display dilemma: getting advertisers electronic

From THE COLE PAPERS, April 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.