US agencies benefit from fully electronic spot cable orders

Donovan Data Systems and National Cable Communications (NCC), the United States' leader in cable television advertising sales and marketing, have collaborated to bring fully electronic order processing to the US spot cable ad marketplace. The partnership enables DDS' Spot Desktop and the NCC eBusiness sales system to interoperate seamlessly.

NCC reached a major milestone in 2008, when the company broke through the $1 billion revenue mark. And as advertiser use of spot cable continues to rise, increased order accuracy, speed and efficiency for NCC’s ad agency clients becomes even more essential. This new process will make possible dramatic increases in the quality of ad campaign execution on cable. From now on, submitting, processing and confirming ad campaigns between NCC, its affiliates and DDS agencies becomes entirely electronic and paperless.

The open XML standard was developed by DDS and NCC to make this breakthrough platform available for the entire cable and advertising industries. And early results are proving the vast potential of this effort. In just four weeks since it went live, NCC received and successfully processed over $3 million worth of electronic orders from DDS agencies.

'Integration with DDS' Spot Desktop, which eliminates paper from the buy / sell process, represents one more way that NCC has made spot cable the easiest and most effective medium for ad agencies to execute in all 210 markets across the US,' said NCC senior vice president, eBusiness Operations and Research, Nick Garramone.

'The impact of this initiative is enormous. DDS agencies send orders containing more than 10 million spots to NCC every year. We anticipate that all local cable orders sent by DDS buyers will use the new service, representing hundreds of millions of dollars annually,' says Harvey Kent, chief media strategist at DDS.

About NCC

NCC is by far the largest and most authoritative cable advertising sales firm in the country. It is jointly owned by three of the nation’s largest MSOs – Comcast Cable, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. Uniquely, NCC is the only company that represents every US market and reaches virtually every wired cable home. Whether advertisers want to reach the entire US, select regions, an individual market or even a portion of a market, NCC provides effective advertising and marketing solutions that only spot cable can deliver. For more on NCC, visit www.spotcable.com.