Originally posted by Erik Sass on MediaPost.com
Starcom MediaVest Group Exchange, which aims to make media buying more efficient with greater use of automated tools, announced that it is expanding its relationship with DOmedia to include out-of-home media buying services — making it the first major agency to partner with DOmedia for OOH transactions.
The announcement follows a year of consultation and cooperation between StarCom MediaVest and DOmedia, during which DOmedia built its automated media buying platform with extensive input from StarCom MediaVest and their clients.
The new DOmedia OOH buying platform is now integrated across all parts of SMG’s media buying divisions, including Starcom, MediaVest and Spark Communications.
Previously SMG had signed up for DOmedia’s “free to post, free to search” service — a forerunner to the OOH media buying exchange, which allows OOH vendors large and small to post available inventory in markets across the country, and OOH buyers to browse that inventory and research OOH assets.
Search results are filtered by various criteria, as part of their campaign planning.
To date DOmedia has signed up approximately 500 OOH vendors and a similar number of buyers for the “free to post, free to search” service, which is still active and growing. They include most of the national OOH companies, as well as local and regional competitors. However, SMG is the first agency to integrate DOmedia’s new platform for conducting actual transactions.
DOmedia CEO Rich Langdale expressed hope that the new media planning and buying platform might become a standard tool for the media industry, due to the efficiencies offered by aggregating OOH vendors, some of which might otherwise fly under the radar.
“We have hyper-local buying tools that allow them to reach audiences at a national — but localized — level,” he said. (DOmedia was originally founded with the mission of aggregating the numerous digital out-of-home media networks, but has since expanded to include static inventory.)
Indeed, both partners said that widespread adoption of a standardized, automated platform for buying and selling OOH inventory could boost investment in the medium, whose fragmentation and diversity have previously presented significant barriers to large-scale spending.
John Muszynski, chief investment officer for the StarCom MediaVest Group Exchange, said: “We are equipping our associates with the best analytical tools to make intelligent media buying decisions for our clients.”
Muszynski added that handing logistical and transactional responsibilities to DOmedia would leave SMG buyers and planners free to focus on the more strategic aspects of media buying, thereby delivering greater value to SMG clients: “Everyone’s busy and everyone’s trying to do more with less. This allows us to streamline the RFP process, the vendor gathering and data gathering parts of the process, and allows us to think more strategically.”
Langdale agreed: “The ‘secret sauce’ of buying media has nothing to do with aggregating all the media vendors. We simply corral all the data together in one place — then the media companies can put their secret sauce in.”
Learn more about the Starcom MediaVest Group and DOmedia partnership »
