Latin America. Imagine Communications announced the release of LandmarkOSI Traffic & Billing 8.4 – the first traffic and billing system in the industry to offer television, cable and radio broadcast stations in North America the ability to receive and perform electronic ingestion of commercial instructions using the SMPTE Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) 3.0 protocol.
Developed in collaboration with leading media service provider Entertainment Communications Network (ECN), this innovative feature, used in conjunction with ECN services for advertising agencies, helps simplify commercial scheduling and reduce make-goods caused by scheduling errors. Version 8.4 with BXF 3.0 is scheduled for release in Q2 2015.
ECN, which led efforts to improve the existing standard SMPTE BXF distributes hundreds of commercial instructions and radio spots each week to the media on behalf of advertising agencies. Currently, stations and networks spend, on average, three to four minutes introducing commercial copy by entering the broadcast date, advertiser, brand, commercial code (Ad-ID or ISCI), duration and other details into their traffic systems.
The integration between the ECN service and LandmarkOSI is designed to significantly accelerate workflows between media location and airtime. Commercial schedules are ingested using XML, eliminating the labor-intensive process of re-keying information received via fax and email, along with the inevitable human errors associated with data entry.
The LandmarkOSI Traffic & Billing system features powerful yet easy-to-use tools for traffic, accounting and performance management, designed to deliver a competitive advantage through more efficient station management.
