• by January 16, 2006

The American Association of Advertising Agencies Friday unveiled a new initiative designed to help speed the development of so-called "eBiz" solutions for media buying and selling, an effort that is designed to convert all transactions between buyers and sellers to a fully electronic communications system. Dubbed the eBiz for Media Lab, the project is designed to provide a centralized location where media agencies, media companies, and their software vendors can share information and data on their progress and the systems they currently use to conduct electronic transactions.

The lab project, which is part of a broader, ongoing AAAA initiative called eBiz for Media, will also allow various media organizations and agencies to conduct experiments involving the electronic transmission of orders.

The AAAA, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies have been pushing for the media industry to establish a common set of standards and guidelines for the electronic invoicing and ordering of airtime and ad pages. However, many efforts have been made independently and some companies have made more progress than others. As a result, a common set of guidelines has yet to be established. One of the purposes of the eBiz for Media Lab is to let all the participants share non-proprietary information that can lead to industry wide standards.

The new lab will allow participants to conduct eBiz tests in a controlled environment with live data where standard message formats are used. Sending, delivering, and acknowledging receipt of live data between the agencies and media companies is achieved, and the data is sent not via e-mail but via transaction hubs that work with the traffic/sales and media buying systems. Experiments will involve getting trading partners matched up and begin testing a transaction in a particular medium using the standards. Messages will ideally be communicated via Web services and using XML, a computer programming language.

At an eBiz for Media meeting Friday, representatives from agencies and media companies made presentations and expressed their commitment to the project. They all agreed that changes in the current system were essential and would help all participants save money and manpower in the long term.

Participants also said they view the eBiz for Media Lab as a means to document and disseminate knowledge within the industry via the eBiz website at www.ebizmedia.com, identify obstacles to successful transactions and make recommendations on how to move forward, and to identify the next steps in the process.

Also on Friday, four leading trade groups associated with the eBiz for Media project unanimously called for an end to the practice of notarizing invoices.

The organizations included the AAAA, the ANA, the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, and the Television Bureau of Advertising.

The groups said the practice of notarizing invoices for local television stations dated back to a time when stations were small, invoices were created manually, and station managers had personal knowledge and responsibility for the contents of invoices.

They noted that since then electronic systems have been developed to handle the flow of information and that a notarized signature on an invoice confirms only the authenticity of the signature; it does not validate the content of a document. They argued that electronic documents are now accepted universally as legal and valid and subsequently the need for notarization has been eliminated.