German regional daily ‘Südkurier’ has gone live with a new ad reservation system to front its SAP IS-M/AM system.

Headquartered in Konstanz, the Berliner-format paper, which circulates in the area to the northwest of Lake Constance, Hochrhein and Black Forest, is using ppi Media’s AdX online system following the transformation.

Initial results are good: “Before, it took our traffic manager half an hour to create complex banners on the old Dart ad server; now it takes three minutes,” says chief information officer Holger Kiessling.

Another benefit is that duplicates are avoided, with orders created automatically in the SAP IS-M/AM ad booking system.

The system go live completes the first stage of an online workflow which integrates integration SAP IS-M/AM in the AdX use interface, reducing steps in the ad booking process.

Pricing and bookings for online orders are made in IS-M/AM from the new user interface. Direct integration of pricing in the booking mask – which includes a multifunction planning board – means sales staff can give binding information on each banner format and requested space, offer discounts and book ads immediately.

Orders are then transferred to the ad server together with technical advertising and targetting information such as postcode, zones, dates and banner types. The information is thenforwarded to the website for publication.

The ad server returns the number of page impressions and banner clicks to AdX, which in turn forwards billing data to the system as ‘verification’.