In the past, classifieds didn't have to be smart. They just had to be correct, valuable and ready to print. But competitive realities have changed. Now classifieds are online, in shoppers and arriving via direct mail. They need to be searchable and easily aggregated.
Papers have to be ready to compete and that means classifieds have to get smarter.
Enter NAA's Classified Advertising Standards Task Force, which over the past year developed a standard for classifieds based on the eXtensible Markup Language. The Task Force's stated mission was to establish standards that would allow sharing and aggregation of advertising data for publication in media-independent formats. The group, chaired by Jack Stanley, vice president of operations at the Houston Chronicle, settled on XML as the best technology for achieving this mission. Discussions are handled via an electronic listserv, which automatically e-mails all group members whenever one posts a message. Subscribers also have the option of having messages consolidated into a daily e-mail digest.