FOR ADVERTISERS

TRANSPARENCY +

As the one writing the checks, the advertiser should have full visibility into all aspects of their ad spend. ABID provides views of a project’s process from start to finish and ranging from a 30,000-foot broad overview to the granular details of vendor estimates all the way down to the individual line.

But ABID does much more than that, allowing for an ‘apples to apples’ insight into production budgets and budget revisions and authorizing absolute visibility into the process as it unfolds whether the advertiser is working through an agency, cost consultant, or using their own internal teams.

Nothing in ABID goes unrecorded: every decision, update, revision and communication is timestamped and identified by the user responsible for the action. The advertiser is assured that any changes or decisions regarding bid specifications, submissions, and negotiations are preserved within the compliance audit tool.

A COMPREHENSIVE ENVIRONMENT

Within ABID’s start-to-finish ecosystem, advertisers, along with their production, marketing and procurement teams can do everything from issuing initial bid specs and creative documents, to identifying bid pools, and defining bidding structures. Brands can accept creative presentations, review and request revisions to bids (in any currency), and mark creative recommends for internal review.

Before committing, the advertiser can use custom tools to assemble different potential combinations of full budget packages spanning multiple vendors (while adding in agency and talent costs), and, of course, the advertiser can award the estimates themselves.

ABID can handle everything from a three-person ENG shoot to multimillion-dollar Super Bowl campaigns. With ABID, the advertiser’s entire spend is standardized and collected for their ongoing review.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL

ABID’s bid specs and workflow were designed with the input of industry professionals from all aspects of production and post.

Advertisers can be assured that all estimates carry the expected accountability so that nothing is left out or overlooked. No bidders can be selectively informed of spec changes or requests without the advertiser’s approval, and all bidders are assured to be kept in the loop without relying on individual communications and notifications. Timestamps and user logging provide the ability to audit compliance at any point in the process.

The tool is designed to ensure there will be no more surprises “on set”: advertisers know what they are buying, why they are buying it, who is authorizing it and how it is being produced.

EFFICIENCY WHERE YOU NEED IT

ABID streamlines the process through instant, digital delivery of bid specs, creative proposals and estimates. Team members with the appropriate permissions are able to review presentations immediately upon their submission.

Dates for the bid process, estimate presentations and production benchmarks are always available to bidders and can be updated in real time. Changes to the spec, deliverables, bid pool or creative recommends can be changed with the click of a mouse and are instantly transmitted to all concerned.

HOLISTIC SUPPORT FOR YOUR PEOPLE

ABID’s support team is comprised of industry professionals with decades of experience in the bidding and production of advertising media as well as the educational and information-based initiatives which are the hallmark of the AICP. The ABID team can not only help with the utilization of the platform, but also provide important and informed insight into industry conventions and practices. This breadth of knowledge and experience represents an invaluable asset above and beyond the tool itself.

ABID is designed to help internal teams understand their own process in greater detail than ever before. With a subscription to ABID, advertisers not only get the industry’s most sophisticated and transparent procurement tool, they also gain access to the knowledge base of unbiased professionals who can help guide you and your team in navigating the production process from bid to delivery and beyond.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR ABID?

ABID has already gone through three major upgrades in its first year of operation. Each addition to the platform has been designed with subscriber input and has deepened the tool’s value in different ways. And the evolution continues:

The most recent release includes tools which allow for viewing real-time, up-to-date running costs throughout the production process; actualizing jobs and estimates on the fly; and real-time submissions of change orders and overages all granting authorized users the ability to review and approve instantly whether on-site or remote. Additional reporting tools include the ability to export ad spend data by multiple, specific metrics for things such as awards to historically under-represented groups, covid specific costs, eco-friendly expenses and more.

And more to come: upcoming releases feature data visualization and analysis tools for your historic spend, customizable taxonomies for the advertiser’s review and comparison of brand-specific metrics, and exportable reporting viewable by category across all of your brands, divisions, AOR’s, Regions and anything else you can think of.

No other tool in the industry can approach providing the detailed data and accountability for your marketing projects that ABID does, all while maintaining the professional standards and norms with which the AICP has guided the commercial production industry for nearly half a century.