The Times Newspaper is the flagship publication for Contra Costa which has five daily editions and a further 10 weekly papers across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Contra Costa realised that they needed to embrace technology for two reasons; firstly to keep existing clients and secondly grow revenues. Advertising Operations & Systems Manager John Stoeser describes the system as “cutting edge technology for self-service ad building”.
MultiAd’s popular design tool Creator is used by newspaper production staff at Contra Costa already therefore it seemed like an obvious choice for the product team to adopt a web based client solution that their team already had foundation skills to use.
Matt Coffee one of Contra Costa’s production artists said “training on the new system was excellent. It was very thorough, and because the templating process is quite complicated, a lot of time was spent covering every facet of the program and solutions for [typical client] issues that may arise”. He also went on to say “The level of training reflects directly on the level of success that we have had. Because we are trained thoroughly and have a good support team, we are able to address issues that came up in a timely fashion, which kept clients very happy.”
Contra Costa has found that their production operations have been streamlined by the implementation of the Revolution solution. They are extremely pleased with the fact that the system allows them to set individual ICC colour profiles for each of their 11 publications which colour corrects photos and ensure quality in print.
Cecilia Homgren-Kates, Ad Services Supervisor, says “The consistency of the ad design and the photo quality has improved since the switch and the relationship with our clients is better thanks to the reduction in errors and deadline pressure.”
Using the automated template design process, their advertisers can easily upload photos and specs for each listing and turn this information into polished ad pages. The in-built automated pagination or ad layout feature allows clients to easily assemble full pages and instantly preview changes with no assistance from newspaper staff.
Tabitha Rider, the Director of Marketing for one of the advertising clients using Revolution says when describing the ‘old’ versus ‘new’ ad building process, “It was a little frustrating the way we had to put it together and get proofs, also the print product didn’t look so crisp as now. Before it was a bit fuzzy.” She also goes on to say that “not only would I recommend [the system] to other real estate advertisers, but I would recommend it to other advertising companies for their clients to lay out their ads.”
Contra Costa believes that the elimination of adjustments for ads processed through Revolution alone will save Contra Costa around $60,000 annually. According to John Stoeser, “We have virtually removed all credits or make goods and are about to eliminate adjustments of about $5000 per month.”
Visit the MulitAd website, or for more information about our client success stories, contact us.
“The consistency of the ad design and the photo quality has improved since the switch and the relationship with our clients is better thanks to the reduction in errors and deadline pressure.”
Cecilia Homgren-Kates
Ad Services Supervisor
Contra Costa Newspapers
“Not only would I recommend [the system] to other real estate advertisers, but I would recommend it to other advertising companies for their clients to lay out their ads.”
Tabitha Rider
Director of Marketing
Contra Costa Newspapers