Trade Associations endorse Ad-ID as Industry Standard for Coding Digital Advertising Assets.

Organizations representing the broadcasting, marketing and market research industries aligned in embracing Ad-ID as the industry standard for coding digital assets and implementing file-based workflows across the entire marketing supply chain, announced Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA (Association of National Advertisers).

The endorsement of the Ad-ID digital advertising asset coding system, which ANA and the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) created and manage, will spur the marketing-media ecosystem to eliminate costly, time-consuming human intervention and adopt new automated processes that support all measurement systems. Ad-ID also helps to streamline steps from production through distribution and airplay.

“With Ad-ID now officially recognized as the industry standard for coding digital advertising assets, we have taken a major step forward to streamline the marketing supply chain and enable multi-platform content delivery,” said Liodice. “It is imperative that everyone involved in creating and distributing advertising assets across all platforms begin identifying them with Ad-ID.”

In combination with its established watermarking technology, The Nielsen Company will utilize Ad-ID to power products including commercial ratings, competitive analysis and commercial verification at the national, syndication and local levels, and across media platforms. Sid Gorham, EVP Strategy and New Business Development, stated, “Nielsen is committed to providing marketers with the detailed data and intelligence they need to build their brands. We are pleased to endorse this industry standard.”

At the same time, a dozen major trade associations, including the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Traffic Directors Guild of America (TDGA), the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE), and Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), joined with the ANA and 4A’s to endorse Ad-ID as the industry’s universal coding system.

AMWA is an engineering community, whose members include Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Discovery Communications, IBM, Adobe, AVID and Harris Corporation. Turner Broadcasting’s Senior Vice President, Global Broadcast Technology and Standards, Clyde D. Smith, stated, “As file-based workflows proliferate across the media landscape, they enable a tremendous new level of accuracy, efficiency and cost-savings. In today’s increasing complex production and distribution environment, standardized guaranteed unique digital asset coding is a vital building block of tomorrow’s streamlined media industry supply chain.”

Transitioning to file-based workflows is a major goal of the broadcast community, according to a recent Devoncroft survey of 5,600 broadcast professionals. Second only to multi-platform content delivery, file-based workflows move digital files from production to airplay without tape or significant human intervention. These digital files contain all components required for airing, including the audio / video content, aspect ratio, closed captions and descriptive information. In the case of TV advertising, this descriptive information is contained in the Ad-ID digital slate data.

The trade groups participating in today’s announcement and endorsing Ad-ID as the industry standard include the following organizations:

Association of National Advertisers (ANA), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE), Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Interactive Television Alliance (ITA), International 3D Society (I3DS), Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), Traffic Directors Guild of America (TDGA), and Syndicated Network Television Association (SNTA). With these endorsements, Ad-ID now has the full support of the broadcast, cable and engineering communities.

Currently, Ad-ID is utilized by over 700 Advertisers, with plans to be fully interoperable with other identifier systems like Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), a new industry-supported unique ID for movie and TV assets, and Plus, a registry for management of image rights.