Mediaocean – the company formed after the merger of DDS and Mediabank in 2012 – has been appointed to develop a new trading system for the print industry, which, it is planned, will cover national newspapers then magazines and regionals, including each of their digital brands.
The service, which has carried the acronym PATS, is likely to have Mediaocean’s Prisma system at its core.
The appointment followed two scoping surveys funded by the NPA (carried out by Deloitte and MediaTel Group) and a six month pitch process handled by the consultancy Pactus, which narrowed a long list of interested parties down to six.
These included global production company Tag; the advertising solutions and CRM business, 5 fifteen; a collaboration between Finnish publishers Karkimedia and software company Futurice; and MediaTel Group (who operate the J-ET trading system for the radio industry).
The new service will aim to bring efficiencies to a buying and selling process that has changed little over the years; the efficiencies could create substantial savings for publishers, as there is still a degree of print advertising that falls between internal systems and remains unbilled.
Elsewhere across UK media, MediaTel Group has run J-ET for 15 years – initially funded by the radio companies, via the RAB, and operating as a JIC from the outset, with the support of the IPA; CARIA (operated by IMD) does a similar role for TV and increasingly VOD, and launched a couple of years after J-ET; and Adazzle, the independently-owned software business, in which WPP has a minority stake, has been running print and digital process systems on behalf of leading agencies such as GroupM, Aegis and Publicis for over ten years.
Mediaocean – which is also widely thought to be preparing for an IPO this year – is working on the new system now and the trial service is likely to launch in the next few months with a small number of selected agencies and publishers.
A project head, based at the newsbrands marketing body, Newsworks, will also be announced very soon.
