Engineers George Beattie and Jack Finlayson, the two men responsible for developing this technology, were recognized for excellence in engineering creativity for pioneering and industry-altering ad placement technology.

Beattie attended the 67^th Emmy® Awards ceremony to accept the award while Finlayson, who passed away in 1991 was represented by daughters Bridget Allen and Terry Grinewich, both employees of Imagine Communications.

The company is being recognized for groundbreaking ad insertion technology that originated in the late 1960s but still serves as the foundational technology behind today’s advanced and fully automated advertising sales and traffic systems. The first successful application of computerized automation of business processes within a broadcast operation, this revolutionary technology remains relevant today and underpins the innovation driving the evolution of Imagine Communications’ industry-leading ad management solutions.

With the award, NATAS acknowledging the pivotal role this technology played in shaping today’s ad management landscape. Thousands of television and radio stations, as well as content distributors and aggregators, are running automated business process systems that are based on the spot placement algorithm and related procedures introduced nearly five decades ago. The technology originally relied on mainframe and minicomputers, as well as keypunch card systems, to help automate and simplify what had previously been a manual and error-plagued procedure.

“It’s difficult to overstate the importance and the impact of this technology, a radical departure from the people-powered traffic systems that persisted well into the 1980s,” says Bridget Allen, vice president sales, advertising management systems, Imagine Communications. “Today’s media and entertainment industry owes a debt of gratitude to George Beattie and Jack Finlayson, the broadcasting pioneers who are chiefly responsible for this transformative technology.”

Harnessing the power of ad placement automation remains at the heart of Imagine Communications’ comprehensive advertising management solutions portfolio, which is focused on providing broadcasters and media companies with the tools needed to optimize and automate the monetization of ad inventory. The Landmark portfolio includes the LandmarkOSI Traffic and Sales solutions, as well as a number of new modules that vastly improve a station’s ability to manage the complexity of today’s selling and programming environments.

Imagine Communications recently launched xG Copy and xG Live Log for LandmarkOSI, streamlining the time-to-air for both copy and changes within the traffic system. In addition, Landmark xG Open, announced in September 2015, is an API-based programmatic solution that allows media companies to automate sales via programmatic exchanges.