In March, SAG-AFTRA, the union representing all commercial talent, and the ANA-4A's Joint Policy Committee, representing the advertising industry, agreed on a three-year contract. Among its many provisions, this extraordinarily complex deal provides the foundation for making commercial-talent management simpler and fairer for all. What is the key? It's Ad-ID.

Ad-ID is a coding system for all advertising assets. It is the equivalent of a UPC. We all know the powerful and universal benefits that came from the UPC common coding. The same principle applies to Ad-ID for all TV, video, radio and digital advertising assets.

Right now, the marketing supply chain is far more inefficient and unproductive than it should be. There is substantial waste, inefficiency, errors, re-work and manual intervention because parts of our system are stuck with archaic analog processes. This is especially evident in cross-platform commercial traffic management.

Common coding could unlock as much as $2 billion of productivity for advertisers, agencies, suppliers and the media to share.

Importantly, Ad-ID will improve the quality of syndicated measurement. A common coding system would provide immense benefits, including enhanced ratings measurement and advanced cross-platform analytics. Marketers will not only know that they're getting what they paid for, they will be able to compare the success of ads across platforms.

Ad-ID is inexpensive, and easy to use. The technology has been upgraded and there is a support team available to help make the transition smooth. Ad-ID is also widely supported by the industry. Many major trade associations, a wide swath of broadcasting companies and the broadcast-engineering community have lined up in support of Ad-ID.

Join Ad-ID’s Chief Growth officer Harold Geller for our upcoming webinar “What Every Advertiser Should Know about Ad-ID” on Thursday, November 7th. To register, go to bit.ly/IHAF_events.