(13 January 2003 5:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: TV Ad Indx has launched Free Alerts a service to keep marketing and advertising professionals abreast of all new competitive TV ad and Press Ads released anywhere in the country.

It is targeted at executives who need to continuously manage a brand or product category and can’t afford to miss any competitive marketing initiatives.

TV Ad Indx claims to be the country's largest creative monitoring service and it covers the largest number of Indian TV channels and publications for every new ad released. It also monitors 52 countries across the globe and provides 11 types of services to over 600 clients and ad agencies.

Instead of ordering competitive ads on an ad-hoc basis, clients can now automatically receive Free Alerts for all new competitive Press ads and TV commercials every day, week, fortnight, month through email. Subscribers can then choose to order CD ROMs with digitised copies of some or all new TVCs in the MPEG format which can be played by Windows MediaPlayer. Press ads are digitised in the JPEG format and can be viewed in Internet Explorer or any other web-browser software.

The digitised ads are delivered with software to archive the ads. This software dramatically improves in-house archiving systems and creates a central warehouse for all reference ad material (TVCs, press ads and radio spots in the future). It facilitates easy and instant location of ads by brand, product, date, size, headline, language, agency and client. Users can instantly view digitised TVCs and press ads.

The system ensures ads once acquired are never misplaced and it allows easy and automatic updates of new ads as they are released. Clients can customise their Free Alerts by specifying any number of product categories to be monitored, eg "Confectionery Products" or more specifically "Hard Boiled Candy". Alternatively, it can be set up to monitor competitive brands or companies, for example, Lux or HLL.

Details required to sign up for Free Alerts include: - Product categories (upto 20 categories) - Frequency of updates (every day, week, fortnight, month) - Email addresses (upto five addresses)

Clients and ad agencies can sign up for Free Alerts by writing to: [email protected]