National Cable Communications and Donovan Data Systems are working together to bring complete electronic order processing to the national spot cable advertising marketplace.
Under the partnership, the cable rep firm owned by Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable, and Donovan Data, the systems and service provider to the advertising industry, are collaborating to enable DDS's Spot Desktop application and NCC's eBusiness sales system to seamlessly interoperate. Deal terms were not disclosed.
Since it went live four weeks ago, NCC has received and successfully processed over $3 million worth of electronic orders from DDS agencies.
This new process allows for significant increases in the quality of ad campaign execution on cable, as the submission, processing and confirmation of ad campaigns between NCC, its affiliates and DDS agencies have become entirely electronic and paperless.
The open XML standard was developed by NCC, which crossed the $1 billion ad sales plateau in 2008, and DDS, allowing this platform to ultimately be available across both the cable and advertising communities.
"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.
Noted DDS chief media strategist Harvey Kent: "The impact of this initiative is enormous. 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."
