Live from DMD New York: The Vision of a New Ad-Tracking Code

What the UPC bar code did for the retail industry is what a new digital coding system, to be introduced next month, is expected to do for the advertising business.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) will unveil an evolution of the Industry Standard Coding Identification or ISCI code, a commercial code largely used to identify television commercials.

The analog code will be migrated to a new Web-based digital format to work with the ever-expanding digital transmission of media including radio, TV and e-mail, said Barbara Baccimirque, senior vice president of ANA.

For those that are not already transmitting digitally, the new system would eliminate much of the manual trafficking of advertisements. If adopted by both the transmitter and the receiver, the system could set a standard as the way to send ads from machine to machine in a fast-growing digital world, she said.

Peter Sealey, former executive vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola, outlined the new coding system in a presentation here Tuesday and talked of his vision for its implementation as a marketing and tracking tool.

He said that while the UPC code tracks a product, the new digital ISCI code will enable all marketers to track the process chain from start to finish and measure return on investment for all advertising channels. He said direct marketers had set the pace with direct mail, a learned, trackable, measurable ad channel, and that the rest of the ad world needs to catch up.

“Measurable marketing campaigns are about to be adopted by the rest of the advertising industry,” he said. “There will be winners and losers. The power will shift to those who adopt the technology or they will be bypassed quickly.”

He said a common software platform needs to be developed to support ISCI. The ISCI system will be unveiled at a joint ANA and AAAA marketing conference and trade show held July 15 to 16 at the Hilton Hotel in New York City.

In 1974, the UPC bar code was unveiled and six weeks later a six-pack of Wrigley’s gum was scanned at the first supermarket to use the coding in Troy, OH, Sealey said.

The tool ultimately captured a wealth of highly accurate data at point of sale (POS). Retailers began to manage their entire operations off of POS data, creating a huge power shift from manufacturer to retailer based on the retailer’s new wealth of knowledge about their customers.

Walmart, which embraced the technology, is now the world’s third most valuable company with $220 billion a year in sales. GE leads the pack with Microsoft following in second place.

“Walmart changed retailing in this country based on information technology and UPC,” he said. “This is about to occur again in advertising.”