Jane Wolfson, head of commercial strategy at Initiative.
The new newspaper advertising transaction system, known as PATS, must involve every publisher or the project risks wasting agency time rather than bringing greater efficiencies, industry has been warned.
Speaking at the Future of National Newspapers conference on Monday, Jane Wolfson, head of commercial strategy at Initiative, said the new system was an opportunity to give planners and buyers more time to be “creative and innovative”, but warned having to switch between different ways of trading would be ineffective if not all publishers adopted the system.
PATS – the Publisher Advertising Transaction System – had original endorsement from News UK, Mail Newspapers, Telegraph Media Group, Guardian Media Group and ESI Media and is currently being tested with the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
Trinity Mirror confirmed on Monday that it has since agreed to join the initial group of publishers, but it is unclear what involvement Northern and Shell, publisher of the Daily Express and Daily Star titles will have. There has also been no indication yet that the Financial Times will join.
“From an agency point of view, publishers have to be on [PATS] within their sectors in order for it to work effectively,” Wolfson said.
“You certainly don’t want to spend half your time trading one way and the other half a different way. It will be a total waste of time.”
Several GroupM agencies have already been a part of the development process, and further consultation to help integrate PATS into agency buying platforms will be carried out with various Publicis and Omnicom agencies, including VivaKi, Zenith, Starcom, PHD and OMD.
Rufus Olins, managing director of Newsworks, the body co-ordinating the project, confirmed the system is on target for an early 2015 launch, after which it will be rolled out across magazine publishers and regional newspapers.
