How to get ahead in advertising - The Washington Post way

This option enables the customer to order a classified ad and determine how and where it will run and for what length of time.

For instance, Burton said, the customer could order a three-line ad that runs three days in TWP, and seven days online for a fixed price. "Then there could be upsell options for borders and icons."

When such a combined unit is ordered the data-type combination would generate the appropriate schedule lines and billing data set behind the scenes.

"It's a pretty efficient order booking technique with those components," said Burton.

This method has also been extended to the classified self-service Web site.

When the customer visits the site, and selects the line of business, depending on who the customer is – a behind-the-scenes determination is made about what's available, at what rates, the kinds of classified templates that can be booked and the packages the customer is eligible to take advantage of.

"This is built on the front end, but interacts with all the master data on the back end so there's no redundant business logic on the front end," Burton said.

Once the selection process is completed the customer can see a whizzywig of what they've just ordered.

"What you see is what you're going to get in SAP. So it's all driven by the SAP for Media engine," said Burton. "Once you order the ad, [the system] gives you a combined order – and generates an order ID."

This, said Burton, is TWP's favoured method and it would like to use more often.

In this case, he said, you need to order each item separately and the order isn't flat priced as in the first and second methods.

For instance, he said, the customer could place three orders:

• A print ad in TWP
• The ad running 30 days online
• The ad running in Express

"After the items are ordered a package discount is applied across all items based on who you are as a customer," Burton said. "If you're a new customer, you might get an open rate; if you're a contract customer it'll get you a contract rate."

This method, he said, offers customers the flexibility to build packages based on their need, and that it takes advantage of existing structures (such as contracts).

"The disadvantages are that the order entry process can be time consuming and we don't have the ability to sell interactively to the customer," said Burton.

He also noted that while the SAP-driven ability to offer packages was great, there are
times when – for business reasons – the company may decide not avail of that option.

"If the customer and price point you're targeting doesn't really lend itself to being bundled this way – then it would not make sense to offer bundles in SAP."

For instance he said, no bundles are currently being offered for National Weekly, TWP magazine and pre-prints in TWP and El Timepo Latino – as "there hasn't been a business demand for it."

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