It had to happen, of course. The media industry could hardly hope
to convince people of its belief in the digital revolution when it was
still trading all of its airtime in the time-honoured fashion - with two
people shouting down a phone line at each other. Soon, there will be a
different way of doing business.
This week saw the launch of iMediapoint, a web trading outfit which will
allow media companies to bid for airtime and other media opportunities
posted on the imediapoint.com website. The inventory will include
airtime traded by Granada Media Sales plus other Granada group media
opportunities linked to its service stations, hotels and websites. For
the foreseeable future it will not offer much ITV airtime - and
certainly not ITV peaktime, which is always fully traded well in advance
- but that could change in the future. And the venture is also very keen
to represent inventory from other media owners - it clearly has
ambitions to become the media industry’s central online trading
platform.
Will it work? It certainly isn’t a foregone conclusion, however worthy
the initiative - as recent experience in the German market shows. In the
mid-90s, Reuters, which had developed Advalue, an electronic tracking
and booking confirmation system for the US airtime market, decided to
adapt the system for use in Europe. Advalue didn’t actually allow you to
purchase airtime from the screen but the plan was to upgrade it to offer
just such a facility on this side of the Atlantic. Reuters formed a
joint venture with Havas, called Adways, and targeted Germany as its
European bridgehead. This was to be the Big Bang - like the euro, this
was to become a European-wide airtime trading currency.
It didn’t even manage to fly in Germany. Rival broadcasters accused each
other of trying to dominate the system, advertisers and agencies were
lukewarm about the whole project and it was finally holed below the
waterline when broadcasters realised that they didn’t actually need a
common platform.
If they wanted to embrace online trading, all they had to do was to post
excess inventory on their own websites.
Are UK media agencies likely to be similarly lukewarm? Simon Mathews,
the managing director of Optimedia, says that they’ll look foolish if
they are: ’Three years from now everyone will be trading off this
system.
I’d stake a lot on that. For big media owners, the cost savings could be
immense - instead of spending so much time and energy on the mechanics
of trading, they could focus all their sales efforts on more productive
areas.’
But some observers say that using iMediapoint will still require a lot
of back-office support - people might be disappointed at the extent of
what can be automated on this system. But that might count in its favour
- the sophistication of the German system scared many broadcasters, who
thought was too automated and took power out of their hands.
Will iMediapoint merely be a dumping ground for inert airtime -
especially the almost infinite inventory of digital channels? And will
other broadcasters come on board?
Granada’s involvement is obviously treated with suspicion at TSMS and
Carlton. And some broadcasters, especially those with virtually fully
traded channels, like to keep control over all their inventory so that
they have room to manoeuvre in optimising schedules. Could that also
prove a barrier?
Tony Wheble, the head of sales at Flextech Television, says that the
market must outgrow such old-fashioned thinking. He says: ’Internet
airtime trading will happen - it’s only a question of how quickly. The
thinking in the current system is based on a fully-sold ITV, but ITV’s
share is constantly being eroded and we know that in the future there
will be an overall over-supply of media. The more we can automate, the
more we can free up our talented sales people to do more creative
things.’
