Hearst Communications will roll out AdPortal® Public Notices across the organization this year, automating the process in some cases and replacing existing automation software in others.
The most recent launch at The Houston Chronicle is estimated to save 20 hours a week by cutting five to seven steps from an all-manual workflow, according to Clayton Wiseman, workflow consultant and 40-year IT veteran at Hearst Communications.
Wiseman said he sees AdPortal’s automation as critical to preserving the public notice franchise for newspapers into the future. “The biggest advantage is making it easier for customers to place and track orders,” he said. “It’s a one-stop-shop that puts everything into the customer’s hands in one place.”
Customers can now see and access all their electronic documents on one user-friendly dashboard rather than receiving them piecemeal.
“We don’t want to make it arduous for customers to place public notices. The easier we can make it, the more relevant we will be,” Wiseman said.
Hearst first deployed AdPortal® Public Notices at the Albany Times-Union in 2023. While that newspaper’s public notices were already semi-automated, the iPublish technology was stronger and shortened by workflow. The biggest gains came from automating how affidavits are written and processed using a bulk-uploader, which ingests as many as 200 public notices at a time from a spreadsheet. This made managing large orders easy for both customers and the in-house team that supported a few “marquis customers.”
Another advantage for Hearst is a reduction in the number of software systems they had to support—not only among newspapers but between other e-commerce advertising products such as classifieds and obituaries. “Everyone has limited resources these days. This is an easier way to keep all the systems up and running,” Wiseman said.
It’s also a win for the industry. According to Richard Karpell, who heads the Public Notice Resource Center, modernizing the user experience is key to preserving the role of newspapers in publication requirements.
> Learn more about AdPortal Public Notices
