Singapore TV Media To Set Up broadband Ad Management Service

Television
Corp. of Singapore (TCS) together with IBM Singapore and IBM’s Lotus Professional
Services has developed a prototype, e-Link, for the management of
advertisement bookings and inquiries on TCS.

This e-Link service for advertising agencies and media independents is expected to be
ready in September this year.

The system is built on IBM’s Netfinity servers and Lotus Domino R5 and will
run on the SingaporeONE broadband infrastructure.

“e-Link is a business application system that help us manage a very complex
medium–the TV,” said Lee Cheok Yew, president and CEO of TCS. “We are
ideally suited to launch something like this because of the [availability
of] a broadband infrastructure in Singapore.”

e-Link allows advertising agencies to view real-time information such as
program schedules, synopses, program ratings, and audience profile
round the clock on the Internet. The e-Link system is also capable of
taking advertisement bookings and provide secure transactions online.

Ten advertising agencies in Singapore have already committed to e-Link.
They are Ammirati Puris Lintas; Dentsu, Young, and Rubicam; Euro RSCG
Partnership; Leo Burnett Advertising; McCann Erickson Singapore; Mindshare
Singapore; Optimedia Singapore; Optimum Media Singapore; Sing Nan
Advertising; and Zenith Media.

TCS is also working with Netrust Pte
Ltd.(the first certification authority
in Singapore), 1-Net Singapore Pte
Ltd. and SingTel Magix
to provide a
secure broadband application.

“TCS hopes to build a direct, [24 hours a day] communication channel for
our agencies,” said Annie Chong, e-commerce project leader of TCS.

This would speed up operations and make obsolete the current system of
submitting bookings for commercial spots via faxing.