Conference Discusses Future Of Media Trading

This week saw the second Electronic Media Trading conference in London, at which over 200 delegates, representing a number of major agencies and media owners, met to discuss the future of Electronic Trading in Media.

This was a timely conference following last week’s comments by Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP. In Campaign magazine he is quoted as saying: “We think about disintermediation in our clients’ businesses. But we need to think about how to combat it in our own companies. Dozens of media auction and media exchange businesses have sprung up – what is the role of traditional media buying capabilities in that context?”

David Cuff, broadcast director of Initiative Media, chaired the conference, and began by citing the growing number of media transactions created by the huge fragmentation in UK media. He called for collaborative efforts to bring efficiency gains to all parties.

Derek Jones, managing director of MediaTel, gave the opening speech in which he outlined the issues at stake: tradition, commoditisation and transparency. He then set out the potential gains of less administration, higher margins, more time to add strategic value and happier clients. “The main motivation has to be the bottom line”, he said. His comments follow the success of JICRIT in the radio market (developed by the RAB and MediaTel), and MediaTrader, launched by MediaTel with 40 media owner partners so far.

Justin Sampson, managing director of RAB, explained JICRIT’s philosophy and outlined the process of creating the system which deals with communication, booking and accountability in radio. He stressed how important collaboration has been, enabled by the RAB.

Jeff Eales, broadcast industry consultant and chairman of the Electronic Communication Group, covered the work that he has already done within TV in brand attribution and set some targets for creating an industry group and building a system for TV. “Within 2 years I expect all trading with my customers to be over the internet”, he said. The agency perspective was given by Andy Roberts, UK buying director of Starcom Motive Partnership. He embraced change but called for consensus, standardisation and co-operation.

Further speakers included Sandy MacDiarmid and Murray Frazer from DDS who talked about their product Echo, which sends TV spot schedules to buyers. They suggested that the television industry would not be able to operate without the system. Thierry Tacheny from Peaktime gave an interesting insight into other European markets, which have hugely different trading environments and systems.

Cinema, currently a 1.5% medium, was represented by Jayne Rumsey, sales director of Carlton Screen Advertising, who gave the background to a possible way to make cinema buying easier for the planner/buyer and promised change to come.

Wrapping up the day’s activity, which had focused largely on TV, David Cuff highlighted how many initiatives there currently are in the market and the targets set by Jeff Eales. He said that it was unlikely that anyone would be leaving with all the answers, but at least the ball has begun to roll.