Personal digital advertising: Mactive has developed a personal digital assistant interface to its ad-booking system that allows for remote ad order entry.

Advertising systems prowess gives Mactive an active position

NEW ORLEANS -- Mac is not the operative word here. In fact, "Mac" can be deceiving. However, "active" probably best describes Mactive's place in the newspaper industry.

Mactive Inc. was formed in 1996 with a focus on advertising systems. Based in Melbourne, Fla., it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Swedish company Fusio (which started out providing Macintosh-based editorial systems, hence the Mac). Since then, Mactive has gathered a handsome share of customers in the United States.

In fact, since NEXPO 2000, Mactive has signed 20 new customers for its advertising system, the nine-module AdBase. The modules are AdBroker for order entry, a Graphics Browser for viewing ad logos and images, PageLayout for classified pagination, Customer Manager for contact and tracking, AdReport for reporting needs, Contract Manager to manage customers, AdRater for rating, Money Manager for accounts receivable and WebBase for Internet ad order entry.

"The only separate module Mactive offers is PageLayout," said Steve Roessler, Mactive's director of marketing. "It works well with legacy systems through export utilities."

WebBase is generating the most attention for Mactive and customers. The newest addition to the advertising system, WebBase provides ad order entry via the Internet.

Key to this is the use of PDAs (personal digital assistants) for salespeople in the field. As the PDA has become more widely used, salespeople working in the field have migrated to it, mainly because a laptop doesn't really suit their needs.

Laptops are heavy, take time to start up and bring with them all the support issues of a desktop workstation. PDAs boot quickly, are easy to carry and require less overall support. Mactive enhances the usability of the PDA when interacting with the newspaper's advertising system by building in plenty of drop-down lists and easy-to-navigate screens.

"Web-based customers can customize their ad," said Lars Jiborn, the company's West Coast business manager. "It empowers the customer."

Mactive's first big category of clients for WebBase is funeral homes.

"The funeral homes log-in and go to their own web page and key in the date and other info, and upload the images," Jiborn said. "At the same time, Mactive captures more than just what the customer uploads. Mactive captures all the data, regardless of what has been deleted during the transaction."

Putting the onus for ad entry on ad agencies, recruitment agencies and car dealers has been a wish for many newspapers. "It puts the responsibility on the customer," Roessler said. "It provides better customer service with a WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] display of the ad, and the newspaper gets a business-to-business relationship."

The new PDA interface creates an efficient system for salespeople in the field and data collection at the newspaper. The PDA uses a wireless connection to upload and download information from the newspaper's advertising database. With the PDA, the salesperson can dynamically book ads, even ones with complex scheduling.

"So far, we've had good response from folks who have seen the product," Roessler said. "It's ready to ship."

For the PDA interface, no extra software is needed. It connects directly into the newspaper's network and synchronizes with the database, which can be Oracle, Microsoft SQL, Sybase or Informix. It must have Open Database Connectivity (Odbc).

"The PDA applications are basically just GUI [graphical user interfaces]," Jiborn said. "We use JSP [Java server pages] to hold the screen info."

The salesperson fires up the PDA, enters the necessary data offline and then connects to the newspaper's web server, which then passes data to the newspaper's application server, Salespeople can also connect and modify ad and customer records on the fly.

Because of the dynamic structure, once the ad or customer file is opened from the PDA (or anywhere), the files are locked to anyone else. Rate error checking is built in, ensuring that reps and customers don't end up with a misfiled rate.

The salesperson works through a series of screens that include many drop-down menus. The entire ad can be chosen from the PDA. Information includes run dates, ad size, zones, colors and placement.

Connectivity to the newspaper is done through PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) to the web server. In addition, Mactive is using Corba (common object relational brokering architecture) to build various interfaces. Corba works well in tying new technology to legacy systems. This technology has been proven in the financial arena, and has been making great strides in the publishing field as newspapers begin to integrate legacy systems with newer technology.

"AdBase is constantly evolving," Roessler said. "Mactive is now working on completing a Java [thin] client that should be ready by the end of 2001."

Mactive says it will continue evolving the PDA client interface, but also focus on providing "specialized web-based products" to funeral homes, recruitment agencies and car dealers. Putting this kind of clerical function in the hands of the customer frees up newspapers to pursue more revenue. It also gives the customer greater control.

The PDA offers a solid solution to salespeople in the field. While it is difficult to do a PowerPoint presentation on one, you can provide your customer with up-to-the-minute information about an ad, as well as billing information. And the cost of fielding PDAs versus laptops, as mentioned earlier, is much more cost-effective.

Perfecting a PDA interface with a newspaper system will be one of the challenges to be quickly overcome. Once the kinks are worked out, remote reps will have seamless capability in communicating the customer's needs to the newspaper.

Now, if they could just make the screen bigger.

-- J.Z.

Mactive Inc.. (321) 254-5559, e-mail: info@mactiveinc.com.

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 2001, Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.