New Service Streamlines Local TV Spot Buying

NEW YORK Buyers and sellers of spot TV time have long complained that they spend as much or more time stewarding orders via fax and phone as they do buying or selling time. Now, the New York-based Television Bureau of Advertising has launched an electronic system, ePort, to streamline the process. Once fully rolled out, the system's supporters say that thousands of hours now spent on revising orders, tracking down make goods and reconciling discrepancies could be refocused on deal making. That said, the voluminous and often disorganized paper trail by which many spot TV transactions are currently processed won't disappear overnight. For one thing, ePort is being deployed over time and only a small percentage of the industry's spot-buying agencies nationwide currently have access to the system. For another, some of the industry's largest TV spot buyers, including many of the shops owned by the major holding companies, don't have access to ePort because their ad-buying software vendor, Donovan Data Systems, doesn't allow them access to the service. "They are being impossible," said one displeased Donovan client.But buyers who have used the new system said they were happy with the results. "It's a great management and compliance tool," said Karen Petrillo, vp of media shop Harmelin Media in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. Harmelin client Boscov's, a Reading, Pa.-based department store chain with 50 outlets throughout the mid-Atlantic region, last month was the first client to test the new service. Petrillo said the system worked flawlessly and enabled her to track a multi-market spot buy throughout the month on a single computer screen in near-real time so that she was aware of any last-minute spot cancellations or revisions. For clients who have to be on the air to promote a sale or event, especially during the holiday season, a canceled ad "can mean a lot of lost revenue," she said. Electronic tracking helps minimize any damage, she added.New York-based Horizon Media also used the system on behalf of undisclosed clients last month. Jim Shanney, the independent shop's chief information officer, said the agency would roll out ePort to other clients as soon as possible. "To push papers around and to use faxes in this day and age is not efficient for any of us," he said. "The industry as a whole has been pretty much in the dark ages," with respect to streamlining the transactional process for ads. Why? "The lack of industry standards has resulted in few options, " he said.According to Abby Auerbach, evp at the TVB and the executive who has spearheaded the organization's ePort intiative since its inception seven years ago, the system is based on an "open standard," designed to be compatible with all of the buying and selling software packages used by stations and agencies to process spot TV buys. (In 2006, the last full year for which data is available, spot TV spending totaled $18.7 billion, up about 11 percent from the previous year, according to TNS Media Intelligence.)Auerbach said TV station sales executives estimate that they spend between 50 and 60 percent of their time processing deals—time they would prefer to spend pitching clients. "So there is a tremendous amount of wasted time," she said, "and lots of room for human error." Harold Geller, svp, digital initiatives, American Association of Advertising Agencies, agreed. "The term media buyer is almost an oxymoron," he said, indicating that buyers spend up to 75 percent of their time verifying and processing orders. Separately, the 4A's is shepherding its own e-business initiative, including the development of a massive registry database that would enable media buyers and sellers to locate one another online in order to conduct electronic exchanges. In fact, the TV portion of the registry is being utilized by the ePort system.Meanwhile, Auerbach said that 644 local TV stations have agreed to use the ePort system. The service is being rolled out to agencies by a software provider. Harmelin Media and Horizon are just two of the several hundred agencies across the nation that utilize software packages from Strata Marketing. John Shelton, CEO of Strata, said that most of his bigger agency clients will be on board this year, but that it would be another year or two before all the smaller shops sign on. Expanded ePort features will be introduced over time. Currently, buyers can submit buy orders and revisions to stations and rep firms and receive confirmation via the system. Later this month a new feature will be activated, allowing smaller individual clients to place orders directly through the ePort Web site. Later in the year, functions dealing with make goods, discrepancies and log time reports will be added to the system, Auerbach said. However, Auerbach stressed that the system is not a negotiating tool, but designed to streamline processing of a transaction after a deal has been made. Some buyers see that as a shortcoming, but said that some TV stations feared negotiating online would "commoditize" their business.Auerbach said the TVB is also talking to software vendors Mediaplex, DataTek, Harris and Arbitron about interfacing their agency clients with ePort. She said the only vendor that's apparently not "fully committed to open standards for all transactions" is Donovan, which has a proprietary electronic processing system called Direct Agency Rep Exchange. Privately, some Donovan clients are not happy. "It's better for the industry to have one open platform and, at the end of the day, ePort could end up being a better system than DARE," said the disgruntled client. Donovan executives didn't return calls.Another Donovan client said the vendor was "advising clients not to use ePort," although Auerbach reports Donovan has told the TVB it would provide "limited support" for the service. "But it's not enough," she said. Some Donovan clients say they are considering using other vendors. One major shop—Starcom MediaVest Group—left at the end of the year for DataTek. Maribeth Papuga, svp local broadcast, MediaVest, declined to comment specifically on the software vendor shift, but she said ePort was a positive development, and one that should provide valuable test data over the coming year.

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New Service Streamlines Local TV Spot Buying

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