MediaTel’s ‘Electronic Trading Debate’ – the scene setter
MediaTel’s Electronic Trading Debate opened via a video Q&A with Andrew Troullides, chief media officer at IMD.
Troullides was asked where he felt the industry was now, a year on from the corresponding event last year, ‘Why Aren’t We All Trading Electronically?’ He felt that last year was a breakthrough moment and said “last year we spoke in positive terms for the first time, rather than cautious terms about electronic media trading.”
However, Troullides felt that although the event came up with a lot of thoughts and some action plans not much had happened in the last 12 months. He added, “For him the biggest threat to the media world was how do media owners make the most of their inventory to maximise revenue. He wondered how some media owners slept at night because if they didn’t address the issue they would find there would be no more long-tail of media and there might not even be a medium-tail.”
From an agency perspective, Troullides felt that “they have shifted up a gear or two and there were some positive developments in both TV and radio. There are one or two agency groups that have started to invest in their own systems development and there is one group that has created and finished their own system as a competitor to MediaOcean”.
Troullides went on to say that he could see, up to a point, the successful workflow systems such as J-ET and CARIA collaborating with agency trading desks that are about ‘live’ trading. He believes that agencies are happy with what they have achieved so far.
He went on, “he didn’t believe that prime time ITV would be traded in real time but felt there was a more immediate need for development in the publishing world.” In a fragmented and complex media world he felt that “decisions were being made for expediency rather than best value for the client.”
Troullides then delivered a note of caution. He felt there were many people in the room who could help solve the issues but beware advisors or consultants from outside of the industry.