Workflow

Ghent PDF Workgroup Collaborates with AdsML to Develop GWG Ad Ticket

Wednesday 28. January 2009 - Free Ad Ticket Specification Offers Standard Method for Including Advertisement Metadata in PDF Files

The Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) announces availability of the new GWG Ad Ticket v1.1; a standard way to include advertisement metadata in a PDF file.  The GWG Ad Ticket was developed in collaboration with AdsML, the international consortium supporting a global standard for end-to-end advertising workflows.
The GWG Ad Ticket facilitates receiving of advertisements by providing the needed information to match the files sent with the advertisement bookings. The group has worked on this ticket for almost three years with the challenge of combining all existing global initiatives. A first version of the ticket was published in 2006.
The GWG AD Ticket v1.1 is now available for immediate use and downloading, at no charge, at the organization’s web site: http://gwg.org/Jobtickets.phtml.
Stéphane Georges, Senior Product Manager at Dalim Software and Chairperson of the GWG subcommittee that manages the Ad Ticket specification work, says, “This GWG Ad Ticket now offers a fully documented specification that, in addition to facilitating ad delivery, can be used by developers or IT professionals who are interested in combining PDF Ad Ticket metadata with their own solutions or data asset management workflows.”
Updates to the GWG Ad Ticket
The first GWG Ad Ticket (v1) tracked the following information in an ad delivery context:  Who delivered an ad (email, phone, fax); What publication will receive the ad (publication name, date); Who are the advertiser and media agencies.
The new GWG Ad Ticket v 1.1 includes corrections to the v1.0 specification and adds one new optional property: Identification of the advertisement version (when the publication has multiple versions).
New version 1.1 includes detailed specification documentation providing the exact definition of the ad ticket properties. The version 1.0 package provided only a user interface to type in information using the Adobe custom panels. This new version is now a complete specification.  
As with the previous iteration of the GWG Ad Ticket, this latest version was successfully developed with active collaboration and technical support from GWG member Medibel+, the organization that unites the Belgian advertising sector. The GWG Ad Ticket is an extension of the existing Medibel+ Ad ticket, conforming 100% with Medibel+ ad content.  “We’ve continued to build on the concepts for Medibel+ job tickets matched to AdsML job tickets, creating a truly open format that can be shared and used by as many users globally as possible,” explains Georges. 
About the GWG Job Ticket Subcommittee
The GWG Job Ticket subcommittee investigates and defines best practices regarding different forms of Job Tickets.  The GWG subcommittee’s initial focus has been implementations of the Ad Ticket and a soft-proofing ticket.  Work in progress includes a “Delivery Note Ticket” as a means to automate the delivery of ad campaigns.
The group continues to look towards the future where implementations of JDF will become more important. As other groups are also active in this area, the GWG works to keep close contact with developments within organizations like CIP4 and AdsML.