Roy Leamon describes his publication as a “particularly large regional magazine,” which, given that the region is Texas, and the magazine, Texas Monthly, attracts national sponsorship and attention, almost qualifies as an understatement—something you don’t hear too often in the Lone Star State.

“Still, Texas Monthly faces challenges that, say, large consumer magazines probably don’t.” The magazine may be known for award-winning journalism and beautiful photography, but its base of advertisers runs the gamut from New York ad agency clients to small-town mom and pop stores, some of whom have advertised with the magazine for years. Leamon, vice president of production and technology, must balance the needs of this range of current clients while positioning the magazine for the future.

Key to this effort was the implementation of the SendMyAd ad portal, which allows advertisers to upload an ad directly to the cloud based solution. Ads are automatically preflighted providing immediate feedback on the condition of the ad. Many problems can be fixed in the portal with tools like the trim tool to reposition and eliminate unwanted borders and slug information. All of this makes for quick, hassle-free corrections and approval.

“It’s important the portal allows anybody with any level of technological sophistication to be able to use it, and for the most part it appears the advertisers who use it really like it,” Leamon says.

The magazine is open ended about how it accepts ads, Leamon says, allowing long-time clients who prefer other submission channels to keep using them while encouraging advertisers to switch to the portal. The magazine has seen a steady increase in the number of advertisers using SendMyAd.

“We received ads from a variety of sources, both e-mail and ftp sites, and we have an upload page on our website, but none of those provides any kind of front-end flight checking for problems in the ad file itself or for size correction,” Leamon says. “Before offering SendMyAd, we probably had at least 30 to 40 percent of the ads we get every month would require us to fix something in the ad or to contact that advertiser or the agency or the designer in order to get an ad corrected.”

As every publisher knows, this can take time—usually a day or two to get problems ironed out, and sometimes longer. “It’s remarkable how often designers leave town when you need to make a revision on an ad,” Leamon says.

This is why SendMyAd has proven to be a tremendous time saver. “Any kind of reduction of workload during deadline week is significant,” he says. “It helps reduce the number of ads that either would have problems or simply have to be trafficked, and sometimes, especially in heavy months, that can make a big difference in how your deadline goes.”

Advertisers, he says, “appreciate the ease of use of the portal and have understood that it is ultimately going to be helpful to them, because it assures them ahead of time they are in good shape with their ad.”

It also dovetails well with Texas Monthly’s plans for future growth. Leamon says his decision to use SendMyAd was reinforced by the application’s support for Web and mobile ads, as well as the ability to create templated (or formatted) ads through the cloud-based tool, Ad Creator. He expects both capabilities to play a role as the publication adopts new production efficiencies and monetization strategies.

“Ad Creator will offer the ability for an advertiser to upload some copy, a logo and a photo into a layout, the system builds the ad, and then supplies us a final pdf rather than our having to build those formatted ads by hand,” he says. “We see this as one of the ways SendMyAd can grow with us.”

Near term, Leamon says, SendMyAd has allowed Texas Monthly to be more productive with a small staff. “And we’d like to explore more of the options SendMyAd offers down the road,” he notes, “especially as magazine production staffs have to be increasingly productive on a per-person basis, because hiring more staff is not an option.”

“We think we do a good job and our readers seem to think so too,” he adds. “We are constantly looking for anything that will help us be more efficient and produce the same high quality magazine that we have been producing all these years, so SendMyAd was something that really seemed compelling to us as a mechanism by which advertisers could take a little bit more responsibility for making sure their ads were OK, and getting them correct before they sent them to us. And it certainly has proven to be that.”

• Smart Folders, which can be dynamically created, depending on metadata matching certain criteria.
• A new check in/check out tool that takes the worry out of managing multiple versions, giving the operator complete control over the editing and updating of documents.
• Project Data Management creates subdirectories that organize project content-such as text and pictures-into meaningful, descriptive folders.
• ES DVL Broadcast, which lets users define and sort the pages of any project or job. A virtual clipboard gives users a flatplan view and the ability to manage multiple regional or language versions of a publication.

SendMyAd is a “cloud based” ad portal, which is accessed using a standard web browser to simplify the process of print, web and tablet ad submission. With SendMyAd, ad materials can be uploaded, preflighted, approved, and delivered to the publisher or their printer all within a simple-to-use portal. It provides both the publisher and advertiser an interactive preflight report highlighting the results of preflight tests performed against the publisher’s ad specifications. With an easy to use trim-editing tool, ads can be repositioned and trimmed to match ad specifications without resubmitting or leaving the ad portal. SendMyAd creates a PDF/X-1a and retains all job ticket and history as metadata. The ad is then delivered to the publisher or printer ready for placement in the magazine.

“Offering SendMyAd to meet the growing needs of our diverse customer base,” said Dave Fry, Chief Technology Officer, “will allow Fry Communications to offer a solution to improve the productivity and profitability of our publishing customers by streamlining the process of receiving ad materials. SendMyAd has built an excellent reputation in the market, serving the needs of a wide variety of publishers.”

Charles Blanchard, CEO of Blanchard Systems said, “Blanchard Systems is very pleased that Fry Communications has joined the growing SendMyAd Affiliate Program. We developed the Affiliate Program so that publication printers like Fry Communications could offer their publishing customers an end to end advertising solution as part of their valued-added offering. We have worked with Fry Communications for many years and look forward to growing our relationship with them in the years to come.”

About Blanchard Systems, Inc. (www.blanchardsystems.com)
Blanchard Systems is a software development and systems integration company providing the best productivity solutions for the printing and publishing industry. As the developer of SendMyAd and Virtual Publisher, Blanchard Systems provides publishers with cloud-based solutions to streamline the process of planning, receiving, producing, and delivering all types of advertising and editorial materials for publishing. As the North American distributor for and shareholder of Dalim Software, Blanchard specializes in automating workflow solutions that solve its customers' most pressing issues.

About Fry Communications, Inc. (www.frycomm.com)
With a heritage in print and a focus on new technology, Fry Communications, Inc. has continually expanded and diversified to meet the needs of its customers. As one of the nation’s largest privately held integrated communications companies, Fry provides category-leading solutions in publishing and marketing services to its growing customer base. Through the Fry Family NetworkTM, an integrated association of family-owned companies, Fry consultants integrate solutions from traditional print and distribution to progressive digital device delivery and custom web publishing, effectively bridging the gap between today and tomorrow.

SendMyAd Case Study: Time Inc.

In the world of publishing, Time Inc. needs little introduction. One of the largest consumer publishers in the world, its portfolio reaches more than 100 million people with well-known titles such as TIME, FORTUNE, Sports Illustrated, and People.

As one of the pioneers of digital ad submission process and practice, Time Inc. probably has more experience with the online submission of advertising than any other publishing company. "Time Inc. was one of the key initiators in the creation of the ad portal concept", says Kin Wah Lam, Director of Digital Development . We implemented best practices for ourselves, and then began working with vendors so that they could develop technologies that would eventually reach the publication eco-system. We also worked with industry associations to help push the adoption of ad portals throughout the industry."

So why did Time Inc. want to move to an online-only model of advertising submission? "It's obvious!" replied Kin. "We are living in a world of internet technology that gives us the ability to perform fast, reliable and secure business-to-business transactions. We bank online and buy things online, so we can certainly send files to each other online."

Moving to an online model would clearly provide a number of benefits – not least a level of automation and QC far beyond simply sending a file (i.e. including preflighting, size checking, and so on). In addition, an online system would help eliminate the time that staff spends informing advertisers each time there is a problem with the submitted file.

"One can draw parallels with the concept of "Total Quality Management", or TQM." says Peter Meirs, VP Production Technologies at Time Inc. "TQM assumes that every segment of a process hands off perfectly to the next segment. Before we started using an ad portal to filter out problems, supplied ads were prone to fail. We no longer deal with the fact that a certain percentage of ad submissions are going to be bad."

"An ad portal would give the assurance of knowing that everything the publisher received had been subjected to a rigorous vetting and checking process. If a file failed to meet any specification, the advertiser would know immediately. The entire process becomes streamlined, saving time and money for both publisher and advertiser it's a "win-win" scenario for all concerned."

Prior to adopting SendMyAd, Time Inc. had been using another vendor's system. Ultimately, various technical and application-based restrictions from the other system hindered the speed of adoption of the ad portal by the advertisers. Time Inc. realized that a new ad portal needed to be implemented.

The new system had to be a 100% web-based model, offering stringent file testing to ensure that the ad met mechanical and technical specifications, as well as being easy for users to implement. "The changeover to SendMyAd was clean and quick," continues Peter. "Around 3,500 advertisers moved from the old system to the SendMyAd portal in around thirty days. There were no handover problems or cross-training issues. The users simply moved from one system to another."

"Advertiser feedback from our current ad portal has been very positive," says Kin. "One issue that we completely eliminated is the subjectivity of placement of the ad, relative to the trim size on the page. SendMyAd provides advertisers with full control of ad positioning on the page. We didn't have that before."

Today, every single ad comes in via the portal. "It's been like that almost since we started," continued Kin. "We don't do anything in half measures that would be too confusing for everyone. Our process requirements are strict and thorough, but we do that to protect the advertisers and this, ultimately, helps the industry. Both Time Inc. staff and management have fully embraced the ad portal because of the efficiencies that it has brought to the process."

Peter noted that "SendMyAd has significantly reduced user-error issues. Also reduced is the number of calls that our production people have to make to resolve submission problems. A key part of the successful move to SendMyAd has been in the area of technical support. "SendMyAd has continued to implement new features, as needed, and has modified the user interface to make it as intuitive as possible."

Peter continues "SendMyAd has helped to streamline the ad delivery process. One capability that they have recently provided is a way of packaging ads destined for the tablet versions of some of our titles. The content components need to be presented in a particular way for ingestion into our content publishing system. The portal has helped us simplify that process."

The popularity of mobile devices such as Apple's iPad has raised the profile of digital content delivery for many publishers from both editorial and advertising perspectives. While continued development of the portal to support Time Inc.'s digital editions is planned, Peter doesn't see an urgent need for new features. "We have to remember that, regardless of all the attention that's been given to tablets and mobile, there's still a ways to go before digital ad volumes approach the rate of print ad volumes.

Kin offers some advice for any company looking to implement an online ad submission portal of their own. "It's important to be aware that, technically, not all ad submission portal solutions are created equally. We are very strict in terms of the quality of files that our ad portal will accept. This, unfortunately, is not the case with some ad portals in the marketplace. As a result, an ad that passes verification from one portal may not get through our portal. Lowering standards will lead to problems with bad files proliferating within the industry."

So what of the future? Not surprisingly, both Kin and Peter take a keen "hands-on" interest. "We are active in the SendMyAd User Group, and we have hosted the meeting in our building the last couple of years," says Peter, "It's a forum where the industry people provide feedback and share new requirements with the principals at SendMyAd."

"Our business is changing rapidly. We've gone from receiving only print ads submitted in digital form to a process that includes new digital platforms such as tablets and mobile devices. The publishing industry is starting to work with a number of new and different formats and specifications. It's important that we all work together to address issues that affect us as an industry.

"Partnering with open and flexible companies such as SendMyAd is a key part of the process. We value their contribution in helping us develop best-of-breed practices for digital ad submission within Time Inc. We are happy to share our learning to help optimize the process of digital ad delivery across the industry."

Obsolete tools can be identified by the upper left corner having a red triangle shaped mark on them, and most have a generic "top" icon.

If you have any workflows which contains one or more of these tools you should remove the obsoleted tool(s) and replace them with the designated replacement tool before patching your system, once you update your system to the August patches you will no longer be able to publish any workflow containing one of these tools.

You will still be able to open and modify workflows containing these tools, but if you attempt to publsh them you will recieve an "unknown basic tool" error and the workflow will be unpublished from all your TWiST servers.

If you are unsure as to which tool to use as a replacement for one of these obsoleted tools please open a ticket with our support site and we will assist you in locating the correct one.

“From the feedback we received from many of our colleagues, the consensus was that the meeting was very informative and provided a forum for users to share ideas on how to maximize business opportunities,” remarks Gressmen. “I want to thank Rob Pepe of TheLabNYC for his leadership and guidance as past President of DUO, and welcome Paul Giaime of J. Walter Thompson, who will be joining me as DUO Vice President. We look forward to developing great plans and programs for our 2012 meeting.”

“As a first time attendee of US DUO annual conference, I was impressed by the diversity of both my fellow DALIM SOFTWARE users and the conference presenters. The group as a whole provided me with insight to future possibilities,” comments Giaime. “The US DUO meeting was well worth attending. Thanks to all who put this together. I hope to help in this coming year’s successful US DUO conference to match the usefulness of this year’s conference.”

As always, the meeting kicked off with a presentation from Dr. Carol Werlé, DALIM SOFTWARE CEO, offering DALIM SOFTWARE’s product strategy and media production vision for the future. Dr. Michael Esposito’s keynote, ‘Anticipating change through automation’ followed. It explained how publishing and print has dealt with external technology and economic factors in the past, and how digital automation can help forge success in the future.

“As a first-time attendee of the Dalim User Organization conference, I found the meeting to be extremely helpful. Being exposed to different organizations, as well as a cross-section of many individuals, was very useful,” observes Michael Weinglass, Director of Customer Solutions at RR Donnelley (NYC). “I was impressed with the knowledge level of many of the presenters and the agenda was very well thought out. It was especially helpful to ‘get under the hood’ and learn more about the Dalim products.”

A unique highlight was a field trip to Creel Printing, which followed a presentation by Allan G. Creel, President, Creel Printing. Mr. Creel discussed how state of the art technology was utilized — and the business benefits reaped — at Creel.

Other highlights of the meeting included presentations by:

• Dennis Warlick, Vice President Strategic Technologies, Deutsch: View from the agency perspective
• Stephen Hart, Senior Publishing Consultant - Adobe Systems
• John Sweeney, Vice President of Business Development, Fine Eye Color: Multi-channels marketing challenges
• David Steinhardt, President and Chief Executive Officer, IDEAlliance: Moving Beyond the page as we know it

A series of presentations from DALIM SOFTWARE covered roadmaps and upcoming new developments for TWIST and MISTRAL (How to boost your PDF Workflow), DIALOGUE Engine (One step ahead in approval workflows), and ES2 (Build your business process). Other general presentations offered an introduction to automation in multi-channel production and industrializing e-media production. As always ‘Tips and Tricks’ and ‘Ask the Engineer’ were well received.

USDUO followed on the footsteps of its successful European counterpart, Euro DUO, which was held from March 22-23 in the palace in Chantilly, near Paris. Attendees from eleven different countries participated, meeting peers, sharing ideas, and forging new business relationships. While much of the product content was similar to that of US DUO, two sessions from guest presenters stood out. Joe Cha of HIPZONE discussed multichannel delivery, taking print content from PDF files and converting them to e-pubs. Ulbe Jelluma of the Print Power consulting group, in ‘The Future of Print is Interactive’, argued that print providers have to make print more actively involved for its readers with QR codes or digital inks, for example. “While print is certainly important for DALIM SOFTWARE, we want to help our customers move into the 21^st century with new communication technologies,” explains Dr. Werlé.

“The meeting was very informative and very well organized and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I found the presentation on ES software to be especially enlightening,” concludes Paul Foley, director of operations, Gloss Studio. “The meeting was definitely worthwhile attending.”

Freeport, OH - Freeport Press, a leader in heat/set web offset printing for magazines, digests and tabloids, has just finalized a deal with SendMyAd, LLC (www.sendmyad.com) that will allow Freeport's customers to take advantage of the industry's premier digital ad portal to streamline and automate the submission, preflight and approval process for advertising files.

The portal verifies whether or not ad will print correctly within publisher specifications; if not, it provides immediate online feedback about the issues that need to be corrected, as well as tools to make those corrections easier.

Freeport's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, David P. Pilcher, says, "We're really excited to be able to provide our publishers with a tool like this. SendMyAd has a great reputation in the publishing industry, and a solid track record of helping publishers significantly reduce the time and resources required to manage their ad traffic. "Pilcher adds that he's also excited about the savings Freeport can offer. "We've brought our own software trainer on board to be able to provide site setup, initial training and ongoing support to our publishers at no charge. The only cost to the publisher is a nominal per ad transaction fee."

• American Media - Dr. Michael Esposito, Senior Vice President of Operations and Digital Production
• Deutsch - Dennis Warlick, Vice President Strategic Technologies
• Adobe- Stephen Hart, Business Development Manager
• IDEAlliance - David Steinhardt, President and Chief Executive Officer
• Fine Eye Color - John Sweeney, Vice President of Business Development

These prominent executives and visionaries are preparing very compelling presentations that we are confident will peak your interest. THIS CONFERENCE IS A “MUST-ATTEND” EVENT THAT YOU WILL FIND OF GREAT VALUE.

Take advantage of the $2,000 discount coupon for Dalim Software products that is being given to all conference attendees. Thursday night at the conference is shaping up as a great evening with the Viva Elvis Cirque Du Soleil show at the Aria Hotel which is being hosted by Dalim.

Set aside a few minutes to register by clicking on this link and join us for this important conference.

Looking forward to seeing you May 5-6 at the Aria Hotel and Resort.

Rob Pepe                                                      DJ Gressmen
thelab                                                          Creel Printing

The meeting is shaping up to be packed with great information and discussions with key industry spokespersons. This will be a DUO “must-attend” meeting. It will be an excellent networking opportunity!

We have outlined below the meeting agenda and key topics being covered. We are confident you will find the presentations and discussions of great interest and tailored to fulfill your requirements.

Wednesday, May 4th

• 6:00 PM: Welcome Reception- Aria Hotel Gold Lounge

Thursday, May 5th

• 7:30 AM: Registration / Breakfast- Starvine 12 & 13 Meeting Rooms
• 8:30 AM: Welcome & Conference Information- Rob Pepe, TheLabNYC, DJ Gressmen, Creel Printing
• 8:45 AM: Strategy and Vision- Dr. Carol Werlé, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 9:30 AM: KEYNOTE Anticipating Change through Automation- Michael Esposito, American Media Inc.
• 10:00 AM: Coffee Break & Networking
• 10:30 AM: TWIST and MISTRAL Roadmap- or 'How to boost your PDF Workflow, Stéphane Georges, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 11:15 AM: DIALOGUE Engine, one step ahead in Approval Workflows- Christophe Bindler, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 11:45 AM: Introduction to Automation in Multi-Channel Production- Stéphane Georges, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 12:15 PM: Lunch & Networking
• 2:00 PM: Build Your Business Process With ES 2- Stéphane Georges & Christophe Rohmer , DALIM SOFTWARE
• 3:15 PM: View from the Agency perspective- Dennis Warlick – Deutsch
• 4:00 PM: Coffee Break & Networking
• 4:15 PM: Adobe-DPS- Stephen Hart, Adobe System Inc.
• 4:45 PM: Industrializing e-Media Production- Stéphane Georges, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 5:30 PM: Adjourn
• 7:00 PM: Special Event- Cirque du Soleil Viva Elvis, Aria Hotel

Friday, May 6th

• 9:00 AM: Multi-Channels Marketing Challenges- John Sweeney, Fine Eye Color
• 9:40 AM: Tips & Tricks- Mike Muscato, Blanchard Systems & Christophe Bindler, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 10:45 AM: Coffee Break & Networking
• 11:00 AM: State of the Art Technology at Creel- Alan Creel, Creel Printing
• 11:30 AM: Moving Beyond the Page as We Know It- David Steinhardt, IDEAlliance
• 12:00 PM: Ask the Engineer-  moderated by Stéphane Georges, DALIM SOFTWARE
• 12:30 PM: Election of DUO Officers- Summary & Wrap-Up
• 1:00 PM: LUNCH

DUO 2011 Dues and Meeting Registration Costs

$695 per company for the first person registered
$495 per person for all other individuals from the same company

Payment can be made by check or credit card. Please click here to register online for the event.

Your dues include annual membership in DUO and registration for one person at the annual meeting, all event meals, welcome reception and special evening dinner plans.

Hotel Reservations

To make you hotel reservations call the Aria Resort & Hotel at 866-359-7757 or 702-590-7757 and mention you are part of the Dalim Software Group meeting scheduled to begin May 5th.  We have negotiated an excellent rate with the Aria of $129 plus tax per night.  Plan on spending the weekend, The Aria will honor the conference rate through the weekend.


The meeting is scheduled to start on Thursday, May 5 at 8:30 AM PST (plan on arriving Wednesday May 4) and conclude mid-afternoon on May 6.

Set aside a few moments during the next week to register for the meeting. We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

Rob Pepe, DJ Gressmen
President, Vice President