Bob Wootton, director of media and advertising affairs at the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA), said: "Adfast is available with no extra cost to advertisers. It makes things very easy between the parties. Adfast also works, has grown enormously over the last 18 months, and it has just been improved."

He added that national newspapers were the only medium that placed an intermediary between themselves and the advertising agency through the small number of "gatekeeper" repro houses that supply them with digital files.

"One of the problems with the gatekeeper system is that advertising agencies cant shop around. The system is a scam. A lot of them do the work at well over the market rate charging 400 to 750 when the actual market price is 100," said Wootton.

He added that during the current advertising slump he felt that the national press should do all that it could to attract advertisers.

Guardian Newspapers advertisement director Stuart Taylor said the gatekeeper system had been set up to counter poor-quality files getting through, and that it could be bypassed in some instances.

However, he said that the nationals approved repro set-up had a place, particularly for the proofing needed for display advertising.

The Newspaper Society, which developed Adfast for 1m and has supplied it free to ad agencies, has had talks with national newspapers about the possibility of licensing the software.

Traffic over the online system has grown exponentially since its launch in August 2000. with Adfast now handling over 5,000 ads to regional papers a week.

Story by John Davies