• by Larissa Faw , October 13, 2020

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) is introducing a new platform to simplify the production and post production bidding process for advertisers.

ABID (pronounced ay-bid) covers the entire bid management process from the receipt by production/post production candidates within the bid pool of pitch specs and other information regarding projects, to the delivery of bids and treatments in all areas of production and post for review by advertisers and their partners, and ultimately, to award of the job.

The intention is to improve the level of transparency and overall fairness of the current process, which the independent production community has called unfair in the past. And the ANA did a study three years ago which found some agency “self-dealing” within the bidding process along with poor stewardship by clients. 

After numerous complaints from independent producers, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into holding company commercial production practices and potential bid-rigging by holding company agencies many of which compete with independent producers for business. But in 2018 it closed the investigation without pursuing any companies for wrongdoing.   

Under the existing process commercial production jobs generally go out to a triple bid pool of companies for both production and post. Firms submit ideas and creative treatments for the job, along with their budget usually using a variation of the AICP Bid Form, first launched back in 1972 and updated regularly over the years.  

In order to access the new system, advertisers must subscribe to ABID, and can in turn invite their agency partners as well as selected bidders to utilize the service. There is no charge for these partner companies to access the service, with the subscription rates for ABID based on frequency of usage. The software is being licensed to and marketed by AICP Services, Inc., a subsidiary of AICP.

The process by which an advertiser or agency chooses companies to participate in the bid will not change. ABID kicks in at the issuing of the job specs to companies in the already selected bid pool. It will be available for use by bidders across the industry spectrum, regardless of their membership status with AICP.

AICP spent two years developing this process. A pilot version was introduced to advertisers, agencies and bidders in the production and post production community over the past couple of months via a series of onboarding sessions and demos conducted by ABID President, Danny Rosenbloom, who until earlier this year was vice president post production and digital affairs at ACIP. 

Rosenbloom led ABID’s development since its inception, which coincided with major revisions AICP made to its production and post production bid forms in December of 2019.

ABID accommodates media categories beyond video, such as radio, digital and out of home, and plans are in the works to expand it to cover print. “Ad budgets tend to be inclusive, and they’re often integrated,” says Rosenbloom, “so we expect ABID will allow an advertiser to run everything through the platform.”