Get your key numbers right

New Zealand’s broadcasters often reject advertising key numbers that do not comply with the industry standard.

The industry standard below was adopted to ensure that key numbers are compatible with the broadcasters’ playout and logging systems.

A key number should include no more than 12 alphanumeric characters. Underscores, spaces, slashes and hyphens are ignored.

A key number should follow the advertiser, duration, unique reference format (e.g. ABC0300001 and ABC0150002 – without slashes, hyphens or underscores). This ensures that the advertiser and duration are easily identifiable and that no two dubs from a single advertiser will ever have the same last four digits.

The ‘R’ suffix (e.g. ABC0300001R) should only be used to denote a technical amendment. Any change to the actual contents of the commercial requires a new unique reference number.