THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY AUGUST 10, 2015, PAGE 25
Australia’s digital buying exchange for print advertising has changed its name to Buy On Platform and is preparing to launch in Europe.
The exchange, launched last November under the auspices of industry body The Newspaper Works and under the brand Bid On Print, has been relaunched locally with new features such as the ability for publishers to trade with advertisers in private marketplaces.
Magazine publishers are also understood to have expressed interest in using the platform, which aims to simplify the process of booking print ads as well as
giving publishers a conduit for moving unsold ad space.
Other changes enable advertisers to bundle different titles and sections together, while creative material can now be transmitted on the system and completed sales will be integrated into the media agencies’ booking software BCC to remove the need to re-enter data.
Development of the platform has been funded by Publisher’s Internationale Australian chief executive Charlton D’Silva to the tune of more than $2 million.
“This is the world’s first programmatic exchange for print,” Mr D’Silva says. “Print continues to get large audiences at attractive CPMs (cost per thousand readers).
If agencies have some distress money they will book it in the most accessible media. If (publishers) apply their mind to this they can really jump-start their market share.”
Hans Peter Rohner, who chairs signage company JLS
Holdings and is vice-chairman of the Swiss Federal Media Commission, has been appointed to head BOP Europe, which is due to launch in the next month.
However, take-up in Australia has been slow: while a number of newspaper publishers including West Australian Newspapers, Fairfax and APN have been supportive of the concept, they have done little more than run trials to
date. News Corp (publisher of The Australian), which is to be chaired in the region by outgoing APN chief executive Michael Miller, has not signed up.
Mr Miller, who is also chairman of The Newspaper Works, said publishers were supportive of the concept of a bidding platform for advertisers.
“We have received regular feedback that the marketing and advertising industry wants a flexible, easy-to-use, single-platform solution to transact print campaigns, so it is the goal of The Newspaper Works to develop a
full-service solution for the industry,” he said. “We are currently assessing the results and feedback of the current platform and will improve the offering as necessary.”
The Media Store has been working with Publisher’s Internationale on the BOP system for the past 12 months with advertisers such as Toyota. Mr D’Silva said the sizes of 10 different print advertising
formats — such as full page, double-page spread, half page and so on — had been harmonised for all newspapers, removing the need for agencies to enter specific dimensions for different page sizes, and drastically reducing the time it would take to book a campaign.
Print revenues are under pressure from the shift of audiences to digital, but Mr D’Silva says BOP could be used to reverse ad sales declines. “I would expect at least 10 per cent growth (from using the platform),” he says. He estimates print sales teams could cut costs by more than 30 per cent, although BOP charges publishers a 1 per cent commission.
“In all the meetings I have had with agencies, not one has expressed the view that print is dying,” he says.
“We cannot sit by and have empty pages run. Newspaper investors deserve better.”