eMediaTRADE Rebranding to AdCore Local

Here at eMediaTRADE/AdCore Local we’ve gotten a lot of questions lately, understandably. We’ve been operating under the eMediaTRADE brand for 16 years now. We have a new local sales platform we are launching and we are combining that with the EDI service into the same company structure. The two products have been in separate companies before now. We figured that a small company like ours should focus its marketing dollars. Maintaining two separate websites and two separate customer bases was just a bit too much, so we decided to rebrand.

To change a brand and move to a new website and to start offering a local sales automation platform alongside our EDI services is a big step. We felt that the new product offering was going to be big enough that we should make some changes. So, we have launched a new website and brand, www.adcorelocal.com and our new company name is AdCore Local, LLC. We will still keep the emediatrade.com and emediatrade.net domains but they will be forwarded to the AdCore Local web domain (www.adcorelocal.com) and we will stop supporting the old www.emediatrade.com website.

If you are a media retailer and are concerned about the transition and the availability of ad agencies using the platform since the change, here are a few points about the transition process we’ve been executing against for the past few months:

• Added messaging to the MXD users to email messages from support for the past few months letting them know of the upcoming name change
• Redirected emediatrade.com domain tohttp://adcorelocal.com/emt-transition with a landing page explaining the change and directing users to the new login page for their account access
• Email and telephone outreach campaign which is continuing with both current and former customers.

We've not lost any agencies but have been adding several new stations and agencies each week.  In fact, since the name change started we've seen more signups of new station and agency customers than we've had in quite a long time.

No change has  been required for agencies at all.  The old name and domain are not  closed, but are tied to our new name and domain. We've added a landing page to the site for those who accessed via emediatrade vs the adcore local site, letting them know that the name has changed and directing them to their information and login pages.

We will continue the emailing campaign from Support and keep working with our customers in order to make sure the transition is gradual and seamless. We appreciate very much everyone’s support through this process and we certainly welcome any feedback any of you may have on the process and how you think it (or we) could improve.

Downloading Insertion Orders

Check out this quick video tutorial on downloading insertion orders in MXD. The voice acting was done by our very own support guru Will Arthur.

MXD's New Rapid Deploy Feature

Our engineers have been working hard lately to give you new MXD features faster. Our first rapid deploy was two weeks ago and except for a couple of small glitches that were quickly fixed, everything is working smoothly. What this means for you is that if a new feature or change is needed in MXD, we can put it online quickly – days instead of weeks.

Congratulations to...

 

This past Wednesday night at 11:06pm, MXD officially

processed it's 20 MILLIONTH electronic document,

and Suddenlink was the big winner! Thank you all for

being the best customers in the world.

2011 - 2012 Technology And Engineering Emmy Award

Congratulations to eMediaTRADE's sister company Texscan-MSI for earning the 2012 Technology And Engineering Emmy Award for the development and commercialization of analog local cable video advertising!

"Texscan MSI’s work on the Development and Commercialization of Analog Local Cable Video Ad Insertion occurred while I was initially an employee there starting in 1983. Prior to that a company called Compuvid had purchased a design from Steve Rose and Jim Chiddix for the first commercial inserters with random access tape control. Later, a team of engineering and marketing folks, including Bill Robertson, Mike Waters, Dick Warnock, Cory Worsencroft and Earl Hansen put together the first product release with fully random access tape control and advertising insertion.

Prior to that time, the tapes were controlled sequentially and the ads were inserted in an ROS fashion (meaning Run Of Schedule) and if an ad had to be aired more often it had to be copied on the tape more times. The Random Access technology allowed each spot on the tape to be individually addressable and could then be aired in any order. This made it possible then to insert advertising on many more channels because the tapes could be duplicated quickly and with much less editing labor than was required to maintain taped spots for an ROS insertion system.

These advances also allowed local cable to start selling flexible air schedules that were more competitive with the local broadcasters. So since much more advertising was being sold and it was being sold for higher rates in the local markets, the CSR-92 and later CSR-192 as well as the CSR-94 and later CSR-294 advertising insertion systems became very popular in the local cable advertising industry eventually reaching as much as a 60-70% market share. It was a very successful innovation at the time and helped bring about great growth in the local cable advertising industry during the 1980s and early 1990s."

-Leonard J. Fabiano III

Valuemapping

As an eMediaTRADE customer you have most likely come across the word valuemapping. Valuemapping is a term that we use to describe the process of translating preferred/recognized network codes from the station to the agency.  It is used mainly for cable network invoices because of the likelihood of multiple networks being in the spot listings on one invoice.  Typically radio and TV invoices only have one station per invoice, so valuemapping isn’t a necessity for them. Valuemapping is actually a simple process. Every account with specialized billing software, such as Strata or Smartplus, is given its own valuemap. A valuemap consists of two main fields; the “source” field and the “new” field. The “source” field is the sender’s internal list of networks, and the “new” field is the recipient’s personalized list of network codes.

An invoice will go through the valuemapping process twice in our system; when the station sends the invoice and when the agency downloads it. As an example, the station sends an invoice for spots that ran on the A&E Network. Their “source” code (A&E) gets translated to our internal “new” code (AE), and the invoice is then delivered to the agency’s inbox. When the invoice is downloaded it goes through valuemapping one more time to translate our “source” code (AE) to the agency’s “new” internal code (AE, A&E, A and E, or whatever the agency wants to receive).

The valuemap is part of the internal coding for each account, so you’ll never actually see it when you’re on the site.  You’ve encountered it though if you’ve ever received a “valuemap error” when trying to upload or download documents.  A valuemap error occurs when a network code is not recognized. For example, the new network NBCS has caused valuemap errors when it hits an account for the first time.  When you get a valuemap error, just shoot a quick email to support@emediatrade.com  with “Valuemap Error” in the subject heading, and the name of your account somewhere in the body of the email. Or you can just call us at 770.642.7440 (M-F 9am – 6pm ET). We could use some good conversation every once and a while!

One final thing about valuemaps; they are completely customizable!  We require a list of network codes from all new media retailers as part of your account’s set up process.  If you ever need to make changes though, just let us know so we can update your account.  If you’re an agency downloading invoices and our internal network codes don’t match up with what you want to receive (you’re getting AE but want A&E for example), let us know!  Send us a list of your codes and we’ll build your map with them so you won’t have to re-key your invoices when you move them into your system.

This concludes our overview of valuemapping!  We hope you found this helpful and informative, and as always, if you have any questions please contact us at support@emediatrade.com or 770.642.7440 (M-F 9am – 6pm ET).

Explanation of Folders

A) Main folders include your “outbox,”  “inbox,” “sent,” and “rcvd” (received) folders.

• “outbox” folder—invoices that have been uploaded, but have not been sent. Invoices stay here until they are either sent or discarded.
• “inbox” folder—newly received invoices. Files stay here for 90 days or until they are downloaded.
• “sent” folder—invoices that have recently been sent. Invoices stay in this folder until they are 90 days old.
• “rcvd” (received) folder—invoices that have been downloaded. Invoices stay here until they are manually archived or the system archives them after 90 days.

B) Archive folders include your “archive” and “discard” folders.

• “archive” folders—invoices that have been in the system for more than 90 days. Once invoices are archived, you can still print them, but you will not be able to download them directly from the “archive” folder. Files stay in this folder for 9 months. At this point they are automatically deleted from the system.
• “discard” folders—invoices move here when they are discarded by the user. Invoices remain in this folder for 30 days or until the user removes them. After 30 days in this folder invoices are automatically deleted from the system.

Will's Super Secret Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake Recipe!!

For Will's recipe, visit our new downloads page. Send your love to support@emediatrade.net.

Updated Agency Registration Doc

We went ahead and translated our Agency Registration Instructions into French and Spanish. The new document is located on our downloads page.

Agency Registration Instructions

If you are a station who needs one of your agencies to establish an account with us, or if you are an agency having trouble with the registration process, please refer to the document below for step-by-step instructions. Please note that it is completely free to receive invoices through eMediaTRADE!

Agency Registration Instructions

Send your questions to our Support Department at support@emediatrade.net or give us a call at 770.642.7440. Support hours are Mon-Fri 9am – 6pm EST.

(Q) How long will EMT store an invoice?

(A) An invoice will remain in our system for 1 year.

Agencies...

New invoices stay in your “inbox” for 90 days or until they are downloaded. Once they have been downloaded they move to your “rcvd” (received invoices) folder. Invoices will stay in your “rcvd” folder for the remainder of the 90 days.

After 90 days, the system will auto-archive your invoices.

Your invoices are automatically discarded from the site forever after they have been in the system for a total of 12 months. This time includes the 3 months invoices spend in the “inbox” and “rcvd” folders. Your invoices will automatically stay in the system for a total of 12 months unless you discard them before that time.

Stations...

Your uploaded invoices will stay in either your "outbox" or your "sent" folder for a total of 90 days.

After 90 days, the system will auto-archive your invoices.

Your invoices are automatically discarded from the site forever after they have been in the system for a total of 12 months. This time includes the 3 months invoices spend in the “outbox” and “sent” folders. Your invoices will automatically stay in the system for a total of 12 months unless you discard them before that time.

Server Relocation Complete

eMediaTRADE completed our server relocation last weekend and all our systems were back online by Saturday June 9 at 3:00am.  

Please note that if you normally send or receive files to an account on our FTP server, the server address should be listed as emediatrade.net. Some partners could not access their FTP accounts this week because they were using our old IP address. If you cannot login to FTP please check to make sure the site is listed as emediatrade.net (preferred) or 208.52.133.98.

Server Relocation Update

The dates for our server relocation have changed. So, from Friday June 8 at 9:00 pm eastern - Monday June 11 at 9:00 am eastern all EMT services, servers and products (including FTP) will be unavailable due to a planned relocation of our servers.  

Please see original post with new dates http://blog.emediatrade.net/?p=414

Server Relocation

To all eMediaTRADE and Texscan customers:  

EMT is planning to relocate our server infrastructure to a Tier III hosting facility in Atlanta. This move has been planned for some time and we have set a date of Friday, June 8 2012 at 90:00pm Eastern to begin the move. This means that all EMT services, servers and products will be unavailable during the relocation. We anticipate having all services online and available by 9:00am on Monday, June 11.

This move will provide EMT with an advanced infrastructure for operational stability and high availability now, will give us room for expanding our current services, and will allow us to offer new products and services in the future. For those interested in the details of our new facility I have provided them below.

Thank you for being an eMediaTRADE customer!

Tier III Data Center is a 15,000 square foot facility that was constructed in 2007 in Atlanta. The building sits on solid granite with 18 inch thick concrete floors, steel frame and concrete block walls with a brick outlay and an insulated membrane roof. This data center was designed with redundant capacity components and multiple independent distribution paths serving the computer equipment. This means that critical systems can be taken offline for scheduled maintenance without impact to the IT environment. The average annual impact of maintenance and unplanned outages in this data center results in 99.98 percent availability.

Facility:

• More than 2500 square feet of raised floor environment with 200 fully enclosed cabinets

• 24x7x365 Network Operations Center

• Hurricane rated building structure with concrete block walls, brick outlay, and steel frame

• Insulated Membrane Roof with vapor moisture barrier

Connectivity:

• Redundant transport connectivity via OC-48 sonet ring and dark fiber

• Multiple 1 Gbps upstream Internet carriers (Savvis, Global Crossing, XO, Level3, Cogent) with geographically diverse peering points

• Fully-redundant Cisco core network utilizing BGP4 and flow control Internet route optimization

• 16 strands of dry fiber buried in over 6 feet of solid concrete and granite with entry and exit points on separate sides of the building

Fire Suppression:

• Waterless Facility – Absolutely NO sprinkler systems in the building

• FM200 Dry Fire Suppression

• VESDA Aspirating Smoke Detectors

Security:

• Razor wire fence

• Key card access control system

• Biometric fingerprint security systems

• Glass-break sensors

• Motion detectors

• IP video surveillance with 90 day archive storage

Climate Control:

• N+2 redundant environmental systems

• Nine 30-ton Liebert climate control systems

• Alternating hot aisle and cold aisle rack configuration with heat exhaust

Power:

• Redundant 480V 3 phase 2000A service on dedicated transformer

• Redundant 375KVA 240V Liebert and MGE UPS backup systems

• Liebert 1200 Amp Static Transfer Switch

• 500KVA and 750KVA backup diesel generators each with 250-gallon internal fuel tanks and 3500-gallon external fuel tank

• Dual 800A 48VDC battery and rectifier plants for DC Power

February Tree Count

Just a fun fact: Last month eMediaTRADE moved just over 58,000 documents (380,000 pieces of paper) electronically. That equals about 46 trees! Thank you to everyone for helping the cause each month.

New Archive Rule

As you may well know, the archive has been set to delete invoices after they have been on our system for 7 months. We have decided to extend our archive from 7 to 12 months. So, from this point on, invoices will be stored in our archive for 1 year. After 1 year they will be automatically deleted from our system.

Don't use Chrome to register

Recently, we've been having a problem with the online registration not working for Google Chrome. So, if you get this error message...

"Undefined

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The form was not submitted because of the following error(s)

Correct these errors and resubmit

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The field must be a number that is greater than  and less

than ."

...switch to Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox.

Trading partner list has moved

To download our most recent agency and station lists, you must log in to your account at emediatrade.net and click "MY ACCOUNT" at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Here you will have the opportunity to "Download the latest list of agencies signed up with eMediaTrade" or "Download the latest list of stations signed up with eMediaTrade." Click the desired link, and go on your merry way. For more information and tips like this, please, visit the General section of our Frequently Asked Questions document.

FAQs are now up-to-date

Hey everyone! We just posted an up-to-date version of our Frequently asked questions sheet, written by our support staff. Provided is a link to download the full document and a drop down menu to navigate from topic-to-topic directly on our site.

FAQ topics include: downloading, uploading, targeting, valuemaping, archiving, printing, and other general topics.