Visuals Plus Express is a new web based service that lets any newspaper give its staff or advertisers the ability to create ads online, quickly and simply. It comes from MacDonald Advertising Services, a respected name in newspaper advertising. MacDonald provides advertising services to over 800 newspapers around the world and has now brought its expertise to the area of online advertising creation.

Visuals Plus Express has been developed as an ideal for advertising sales staff, enabling them to create a complete spec-ad suitable for presentation to a client in a matter of minutes.

Visuals Plus Express is also ideal for advertisers, who can put their own ads online so they can be easily edited and updated from any computer. MacDonald says it saves time and money coordinating content and proofs between the newspaper and advertiser, and helps lower production costs.

A large range of ready made templates covering a broad range of categories including property, cars and recruitment are available, with the option to add personalised online ad templates. Once a template is selected, text and images can then be added. Images can be uploaded using a web browser.

Visuals Plus Express then builds the final artwork and display an on-screen proof, and then gives the option of downloading the finished artwork as a PDF file.

Trio Technology says Visuals Plus Express is inexpensive to use, there is nothing to install or maintain, and all that is needed is a web browser. Pricing is determined according to circulation, for example, a daily newspaper of 50,000 circulation would pay only $280 per month. That pricing is capped. The only additional costs are a one off fee per ad to convert existing artwork into online ad templates.

A trial password to access Visual Plus Express is available from Trio Technology on (07) 5575 7244.

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