Why aren’t we all trading electronically?
Several hundred people will be gathering at Drapers’ Hall on Throgmorton Street (the street where the London Stock Exchange was once housed) tomorrow to remember one of the city’s most significant changes – the launch of electronic trading.
It was 25 years ago this week, that the city had its “Big Bang” moment, the deregulation of London’s financial markets, which included the end of open outcry trading on the floor of the Exchange. Instead everyone got screens.
Big Bang reduced commission rates; equity dealing businesses became heavily capitalised (not all succeeded) and integrated broking businesses were created.
Today in the media industry there is still very little industry-wide electronic trading. Certainly demand side platforms mean that the trading of digital inventory is far more automated, but these tend to be bespoke agency platforms, with little industry consensus or industry input. At a recent conference, a senior agency director said that for all this technology plans were still done in Excel, and often mistakes occurred as a result.
In TV, CARIA (owned by IMD) has taken a lot of the administration cost out of TV buying, and is now turning its attention to VoD too, but it would admit this is still far from representing electronic trading. In radio, MediaTel Group operates J-ET for the Radio Centre and IPA and goes a long way towards automating the trading process – recently adding a link to the DDS system after some years of discussion. Conceived and launched over ten years ago, arguably little old radio, through J-ET, is still leading the way!
In press, Adazzle works with GroupM and others to manage the print and online process, but it’s not a collaboration as such with the media owners – certainly not an industry initiative. MediaEquals ran some real one-off auction-style trading online for LOCOG around Olympic out of home inventory, and has just agreed a deal with Northcliffe, details of which have yet to be revealed fully.
Harris – which works in several other industries too – has been operating airtime management platforms for major TV companies for many years now, but these don’t link with agencies. Harris is said to have aspirations in other media and in support of media agencies.
Talking of which, it was announced just a few weeks ago that DDS and MediaBank, whose systems manage most of the US media agency market, are to merge to create MediaOcean – subject to regulatory approval. MediaBank is said to have better digital campaign management tools; DDS has the UK market wrapped up. The combination might yet see an agency system become a would-be trading platform.
So, 25 years behind the banking industry it would seem that hope may yet be growing for the media industry to adopt electronic trading more widely over the next few years.
But what needs to change for that to happen? Who would lead it? And what role should the industry bodies have?
MediaTel Group’s next event will discuss all of this and more with the “players” and the “traders”. There is a small charge for technology suppliers and tickets can be bought online here. Tickets are free for anyone else wishing to attend. To apply for a ticket, email us now.
The event partners are Harris, IMD, MediaBank and MediaEquals, with lunch sponsored by DDS.