Matt Miller, president and CEO of AICP, and Danny Rosenbloom, VP, Digital and Postproduction, have announced the release of an updated and revised AICP Bid Form that fully integrates production and postproduction tasks and categories. he The form is the result of several months of planning and consultation with AICP members across production and postproduction, as well as with a range of stakeholders who play key supporting roles in the making of content in the moving image for agencies and brands.
The original AICP Bid Form was introduced by the association in 1975 as a way to standardize bidding on commercials. It was created in response to the widespread confusion caused by agencies and advertisers using a range of promulgated forms to estimate costs for commercial productions. The AICP Bid Form revolutionized the industry and became the de facto standard on which commercial production has been based since. AICE followed suit in the mid-’90s and introduced a stand-alone form for bidding for postproduction in a similar format to how the AICP form was structured. Both forms were available essentially as open source documents and have been adapted for use in a variety of situations by companies across the entire production and postproduction spectra.
“Much like the very first AICP Bid Form, our updated version of the harmonized production and postproduction bid forms is a revolutionary advancement that tracks to the industry’s evolution,” said Miller. “The AICP Bid Form has been the basis of how we all do business in this industry for decades. Changing it was a bold move, but one we felt was of paramount importance. The careful planning and work that’s gone into this is a testament to our role as industry leaders. It’s a proactive effort to stay ahead of prevailing trends and help our members–and the industry at large–articulate the approach to this expanding business.”
Following the merger of AICE and AICP in January of 2018, the association launched an initiative to develop a coherent approach that would encompass both the AICP Bid Form and the and what was the AICE Bid Form. Among its goals were maintaining as much of the pre-existing forms as possible while allowing for diverse bidding approaches where necessary and updating the overall bidding architecture to meet today’s production and post landscape with one clear voice.
“In the ecosystem of bidding, the new AICP Bid Form provides a structural realignment for everyone going forward,” said Rosenbloom. “There’s no need for anyone to change the bidding software, concepts, layouts or methodology they’re currently using. While a few sections have been reorganized and re-tasked, the overall picture should be familiar for everyone.”
The new form’s architecture and concepts have been shared throughout the process with the leading third-party bidding software programs like Hot Budget, ShowBiz, ActualizeIt, Xytech, CETA and others that use the AICP Bid Form as their foundation.
Rosenbloom noted that, particularly in the area of postproduction, many individual companies confirmed continuous and non-standardized customization of the AICE form in order to keep up with the directions that the industry was moving in. With this new Bid Form, sections have been expanded for areas like audio and finishing and should allow all companies to bid in a consistent format with editorial. An entire section has also been assigned to social deliverables, and a new open format section has been created for the non-standard bid forms used by design, animation and visual effects.
Among the highlights of the new Bid Form is a letter structure that runs from Section A to Section X. Rosenbloom points out that most users of the new form will see relatively little change to how the form works, but with some important distinctions. While Sections A through N remained essentially unchanged, sections O and P have been re-assigned while remaining part of a production’s bidding structure.
The major changes are the adoption of a greatly expanded set of budget sections and lines geared to postproduction tasks and processes. Here, Sections Q through W take the former AICE sections, somewhat re-worked to accommodate social deliverables. Still, those sections retain the original AICE Bid Form numbering system, with Section X reserved to accommodate the aforementioned non-standardized bid formats used by most design, animation, visual effects and interactive studios.
“We live in a world where media changes by the minute,” said Rosenbloom. “We’ve seen our bid form, and the AICE Bid Form as well, try and adapt to these changes on the fly. That’s caused a degree of confusion, which has been complicated by the fact that advertisers are now beginning to work directly with AICP member companies, often providing their own forms and templates.
“Our new bid form is designed to address all of this,” Rosenbloom continued. “It reflects the fact that we view production and post as an integrated process, and we no longer make distinctions between them by using separate bidding forms. With the enlarged AICP community, production and post are talking to each other now in new ways, and the bid form addresses this in a holistic way.”
More information on the AICP Bid Form, as well as links to download it, can be found here. This page also includes links to instructional videos explaining how to use various aspects of the new form.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More