• by Ken Liebeskind , July 15, 2002

The Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies are teaming up to introduce a new digital advertising coding system that, if adopted by the industry, will generate code numbers for ads in all media, which will help agencies and advertisers place and monitor ads more efficiently.

Since 1970, television ads have been given ISCI (Industry Standard Coding Identification) codes, which were introduced after the wrong ads were sometimes run on network TV. That system has worked well, "but it's not a digital system, so we're migrating from analog to digital," according to Barbara Bacci-Mirque, a senior vice president at the ANA. Also, ISCIs are only used for TV ads. The new system, Advertising Digital Identification (Ad-ID) can be used for all forms of media, since it's being done digitally.

ISCIs are eight-digit codes, but Ad-IDs will be 12 digits, the last four assigned digitally by a website that will be operated by Advertising Digital Identification, the new company that has been formed by the ANA and AAAA.

Ad-IDs will store a wide variety of information about ads, including which agency created them, who was involved in their creation and when and where they run.

Longer-term benefits of Ad-IDs include the possibility of global and cross-media campaign tracking, ROI advertising analysis, and real time verification that media ran according to plan.

O. Burtch Drake, AAAA president-CEO says, “Ad-IDs will be a system that allows advertisers, agencies, the media, and suppliers to be fully connected and communicating in real time. We’re confident this new ID system will revolutionize the industry the way the UPC code revolutionized the grocery business.”

Ad-IDs will be demonstrated at the ANA/AAAA Marketing Conference & Trade Show in New York today. They will be introduced in October with a goal of universal adoption by all media, advertisers, agencies and their suppliers.