Bringing Advertising Accountability to the Web

The Situation: A major Toronto advertising agency supplies their clients (a major computer manufacturer and a leading tele-communications firm) with detailed accountability reports. These reports provide statistics on the ad's actual performance, and also forecast future performance levels, giving clients the chance to truly evaluate how well their advertising dollars are being spent.

While the agency believed in the value of these reports, they wanted to reduce amount of time and effort needed to pull them together and distribute them to their clients. Their analysts were spending more time on the repetitive, administrative tasks needed to prepare these reports than on interpreting the results. The agency was also concerned about keeping this data secure they did not want specifics on their performance to fall in to the hands of competitive agencies.

Our Solution:
We automated the production of the reports via an IBM DB2 Universal Database. Reports and graphs can now be instantly and easily generated. We then brought it to the web using WebSphere Application server, eliminating the need to deliver reports to the customer and providing them with instant real-time access to the information. The clients can now access reports at their convenience, by simply logging in to a web site. By granting access to only those who need to view reports (via a password security program), we assured the agency that their data was protected. Various levels of security were established, allowing users to access only those reports that are pertinent to their needs.

Results:
• Report production time drastically reduced.
• Eliminated complexity of the report production process.
• Simplified report distribution.
• The agency now uses our application as a major selling point to attract prospective clients.

Platform:
Operating system: Windows NT
Database: IBM DB2 Universal Database
Application Server: IBM WebSphere Application Server
Browser: Netscape or Internet Explorer