Customer Profile

Inc./Cisco Growing with Technology Awards—Internet/Virtual Category

"Without the use of the Internet and network technology we could not handle the thousands of ads that have to be pushed through our facility on a daily basis. Without network technology we would not have a business. Period."

Jeff Turner

President

AdOut

www.adout.com

Background

Founded in 1986, AdOut evolved into an extremely specialized company dedicated to advertising production services for the newspaper industry. Today, more than 750 newspapers around the country subscribe to AdOut's syndicated creative services Web site, called "thespecdept.com". The Los Angeles-based company, recently purchased by Baltimore's TC Advertising, has doubled in size every year for the past six years to its current 200 employees, with corresponding increases in revenue.

Challenge

Advertising is the lifeblood of newspapers, and any third-party service that can improve ad creation, distribution and sales can make a significant impact. Typically, advertising materials such as sales tools, creative concepts, and production templates are distributed to newspapers on CD-ROM, which can be cumbersome and difficult to access. Recognizing the newspaper industry's need for a better way to organize creative content, AdOut decided to create a Web-based advertising resource to enable clients to quickly find and use the information they need. To support this service and speed distribution of its own advertising production services, AdOut needed a network that could retrieve and transmit large media files quickly and reliably.

Solution

Even in its early years, AdOut was an avid proponent of networking technology, having started with a small AppleTalk network to improve office communication. In 1994, to improve its ability to distribute proofs to customers, the company implemented a wide area network (WAN) powered by Cisco 3600, 2500, 1700 series routers protected by the Cisco PIX™ Firewall. Today, AdOut's major customers have secure access to its network through dedicated T1 connections.

"We have almost a terabyte of RAID-based content that can be accessed through our networks, most of which is driven by a SQL relational database," explains Jeff Turner, President of AdOut. "Customers can log on to our Web site, find out where a job is in our process, and check status in our database in real time. We work about 2,000 jobs a week, so it's critical that clients be able to log on and see exactly what's happening with their jobs."

The high-performance, modular architecture of the Cisco routers enables AdOut to transmit large media files with maximum speed and reliability, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

"Our network transformed our relationship with our key customers on all fronts," says Turner. "With our newspaper customers, going to T1 line communication over six years ago gave us the ability to tackle more of their work. This has resulted in the Los Angeles Times outsourcing all of its ad production to us."

As it expanded its services to provide creative tools, AdOut established a Web service hosted by ISP Host Pro, which enables subscribers to search and retrieve materials conveniently from their Web browsers. According to Turner, the impact of networking on his business cannot be overstated.

"Without the use of the Internet and network technology, we could not handle the thousands of ads that have to be pushed through our facility on a daily basis," says Turner. "Our clients are three of the largest newspapers in the U.S. Without network technology we would not have a business. Period."

Results

AdOut has doubled every year for the past six years, and expects revenue growth to also double because of its Internet strategies. The company was recently acquired by TC Advertising and plans to rely heavily on its Internet strategy to fuel increased expansion plans. AdOut soon expects to migrate 100 percent of its business to the Internet, introducing new services such as online ad building. With its scalable, modular Cisco equipment poised to support future growth and new applications, AdOut is assured of the top network performance the company has grown to depend on.