A case of petty politics?

Why isn’t there a press trading system in the UK? Patricia Kill, sales support director at News International, said the UK newspaper industry is trailing behind other media (and markets) when it comes to investing in and creating a system for agencies, such as J-ET and CARIA.

Speaking at MediaTel Group’s ‘Would more investment in media systems make us all more profitable?’ (in association with Clearcast) Kill said system providers in the UK are not “meeting up” to provide a cross-media solution that can benefit newspapers.

“There is too much process involved in the UK, which you don’t see in other markets,” she said. Kill used Finland as an example of  “getting it right”.

“In Finland, companies such as Sanomat Group invest in the right people to work on trading systems, and they focus on the end result. Petty politics doesn’t get in the way like it does in the UK – certainly in the news industry.”

“The industry needs a common data standard so systems can integrate. The bread and butter needs to be sorted out – there is value in dealing with the basics,” she said.

However, Harry Torrance, MD at Adazzle, was more positive about trading systems for print and online (Adazzle -which has been operating for nearly ten year now – covers 40% of the press industry, according to Torrance). “It is hard work but now is an exciting time to be in the industry,” he said. “Technology can do more than the industry could want (or be able to cope with) now.”

“Companies just need to have enough interest to [integrate] systems for common clients,” he continued.

Focusing on online, James Wildman, Yahoo!’s managing director & VP sales, UK and Ireland, said “there is lots of wasted resources going in to developing online systems. The IAB should bring together a common standard”.

When pushed, Wildman said he would be willing to collaborate with other big online players such as Google on a single online  system, but remained clear that there are limitations – “we are still competitors”, he said.