8 Shortlisted To Build Australian OOH Industry’s Automated Transaction Platform
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Australia’s Outdoor Media Association announced recently that a shortlist of eight – non-identified – companies/consortiums have been invited to submit a Request for Proposal to build the Australian Out-of-Home industry’s world first Automated Transaction Platform (ATP).
“We are embarking on this ambitious world first with unanimous industry support and obvious interest from home and abroad,” says Grant Guesdon, chief architect of the project and general manager of MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure). “We learned a lot from building our audience measurement system MOVE and the ATP will build on this success. We want to make the transactions of briefing, proposal evaluation, booking and billing OOH as seamless and easy as possible, with credible data included that helps agencies and clients better utilize the benefits of our channel.”
The platform being designed is for all OOH and DOOH formats. It’s a transactional platform aimed at automating current processes and making the planning and buying of OOH easier – not, at this stage, a programmatic platform.
A little background: In June, 2015, the OMA called for Expressions of Interest to build an ATP that would create a one-stop hub for the buying and selling of OOH in Australia across all formats. It was expected to be a world-first. The industry had first joined together more than five years earlier to launch its audience measurement system, MOVE, the first of its kind in the Australian market. The group wanted to move on from that success, and felt that automation was the next obvious step.
Hence, the OMA asked for expressions of interest from individual organizations, or consortiums, which specialize in software development, to develop a portal hub to amalgamate the various OOH formats under one transaction platform. It said that the platform should be accessible via a mapping interface and have the ability to pull various data sources, including consumer and geodata. It was envisioned as a platform with four components, and those interested in tendering could bid for the entire transaction platform, or one or more of the four components. Phase one would concentrate on automating the current processes including the integration of industry formats and inventory; selling and buying; as well a post analysis and billing.
A total of 21 companies/consortiums from Australia and abroad submitted an Expression of Interest. These were all interviewed by the OMA, giving each an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities, and following this, the short list of eight was drawn. On March 9/16, the RfP was delivered to the shortlist, detailing the specifications and standards required by the industry to build the platform.
“We believe the ATP will amalgamate our industry and create real time savings for planners and buyers of our channel, giving them fast access to visualize information about their campaigns and audiences, as well as the evaluation process,” says Guesdon. “This was a very competitive EOI and it was a hard task shortlisting 21 very solid bids down to eight. The EOI process has also allowed us to gain great insights into the technology that is available out there.”
Charmaine Moldrich, OMA CEO, at the initial announcement in June/15, said, “We know that each day nine out of 10 Australians leave home, and as a consequence of our growing audiences we are seeing OOH on more media plans. OOH revenue has grown 26% in the last five years and technology makes our once static channel dynamic. It is our intention to capitalize on this growth and invest in making it easier to brief, plan and buy our signs across the full array of outdoor formats nationally.”
OOH is the second fastest growing media in Australia and OMA members represent 90% of the OOH industry which accounted for $602.1 million in advertising revenue in 2014.
Major industry bodies, including the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) and the Media Federation of Australia (MFA), also support the project.
Phase one is expected to be in market in 2016. Future expectations for subsequent rollouts of the ATP will look to include automated trading and programmatic trading.
Wirth Consulting was contracted to write the technical specification for the RfP.
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