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IMD's Legato system provides a secure and user friendly trading platform for the confirmation of online advertising bookings.
The problem
Annual online advertising spend grew from £825m in 2004 to a reported £2bn for 2006. Market share reached 11.4%, a further indication that internet advertising has grown faster than any other advertising medium. (Source: IAB)
Whilst positive news for the industry as a whole, this rapid growth has created a substantial overhead; planning, production, buying and selling processes have taken time to find definition in the online space and continue to evolve. The associated administration burden is exacerbated by the fact that in online, advertisers and their agencies can trade with hundreds of media owners representing thousands of websites and millions of web pages. It's a complex, flexible and diverse space to trade in.
The concept of the ad server didn't exist before online and its power to provide detailed advertising effectiveness data for agencies and flexible inventory management techniques for publishers has seen it become the backbone of the industry. However with so much data available, an agency is faced with more work; massive amounts of data analysis, the potential to optimise the delivery of the creative and the associated advertising spend plus using performance data for planning new activity.
What this all means is the online advertising industry faces a challenge in terms of efficiency and profitability simply because of the number of staff and the amount of time required to trade online ad campaigns at serious scale given all the associated complexities.
TV and Radio have systems to counter this problem and though there are numerous reasons for their relative successes, the underlying theme is that by eradicating time consuming, inefficient and outmoded processes, both buyers and sellers do more business, making the media more attractive to advertisers and a better place to work.
IMD's Legato system improves the logistics of online advertising bookings. Backed up by a fully managed support service, Legato allows media owners and agencies to connect easily with each other and to process business more efficiently.
The solution
Legato simplifies the admin heavy online advertising trading process for both media owners and media buying agencies by providing an intuitive system for the confirmation of online advertising bookings.
We're not trying to re-invent the wheel and change the way everything works; that's for the industry to decide. Our ideas for future products and services do answer the emerging requirements from both sides; talk to us and see if they match your expectations.
Legato answers the immediate problem first; booking online media should not require a media owner to send a fax, or a media buyer to fax back.
With Legato the Insertion Order generation and approval process is fully online and totally secure, making the process more efficient and accountable. The benefits and workflow can be summarised as follows:
Media Owner:
- Intuitive interface for sales people to create an online IO
- Enter booking details manually or import from sales management tool
- Send IO notification to media buying agency for secure approval
- Receive confirmation of approved IO, export to sales management tool
Media Buyer:
- Intuitive 'IO dashboard' provides overview of bookings' status
- Review IO booking details online
- Approve IO by adding reference(s) required by agency financial system
Additional benefits for both buyers and sellers include:
- Integration options for sales management tools, ad servers, financial systems
- Notification to internal traffic teams on booking approval
- Notification to creative agency of booking approval and provision of relevant ad specs
Legato provides what the industry needs first; an online trading platform that reflects the existing booking confirmations process.
What about the new media buying agency systems?
Legato development and its underlying technology is based on industry standard, interoperable web technologies; an API together with additional functionality in the Legato interface to support media agencies who want to request IOs via a planning tool or other 'IO request' based system will be available when the time is right.
Online media inventory; its formats and the way it is sold is very complex. There are many commercially sensitive issues that need looking at before the industry at large can switch to a media agency driven IO system, if it wants to.
Further information
For further information on Legato please contact:
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