M/Buy Aims to Connect Large Advertisers with Local Papers

For all their efforts to create one-order/one-bill networks over the decades, newspapers have yet to shake the perception among big agencies that buying newspaper ads across multiple markets is a hassle. Ad buyers gravitate to the most efficient buys, and newspaper too often is looked on as a fragmented medium that requires just too much work.
 
That perception has only worsened due to the ease of buying digital advertising. “It’s very easy to do, you get some nice analytics, here’s what was delivered, here’s the click-through rate, here’s the cost of acquisition,” says John Bauschard, COO of MediaBank, the big ad agency systems provider. “The problem with print is it’s just not as clear. How do you use the same metrics, even though they’re not exactly the same, to get available inventory to those folks at the right time?”
 
MediaBank thinks the answer is replicating for newspapers the advertising management software — the so-called demand side platform (DSP) — that big ad agencies use to buy broadcast and digital. M|Buy DSP is a central console for the buying and selling of local advertising inventory. In its first phase, it allows national advertisers can order buys on local newspaper and out-of-home advertising, and see on one screen the different daily, weekly, ethnic, alternative and niche newspapers available, together with demographic data from the U.S. Census, readership and circulation data, rates and interactive maps.
 
“M|Buy DSP enables local media vendors to easily share inventory with the biggest-budgeted national players, and it gives national media planners a full, targeted view of nationwide local media inventory,” Bauschard says. “We’re helping both sides of the marketplace.”
 
What’s M|Buy DSP’s advantage for smaller papers? That smaller papers are finally in front of buyers. “Nobody ever learns the geography,” Dave Crawford M|Buy’s general manager, says of ad agency buyers. “They never get the feel for a specific market, so a lot of time they’re just buying the main paper — whereas the local advertisers are buying in all sorts of media.”
 
M|Buy is approaching 10,000 newspaper titles on its system, and is actively looking for more. It’s also partnered with the Audit Bureau of Circulations and the Circulation Verification Council for data. “What newspapers can do is keep in touch with us, update their rates and reach,” says Bauschard. (Papers can register their ad inventory with M|Buy here.
 
MediaBank believes the DSP model will work where other newspaper networks have faltered because it hooks up buyer and seller directly. “National buyers are very sensitive to anything that smells like brokerage,” Bauschard says.
 
“Totally,” chimes in Crawford. “Having something that’s intuitive and that’s right there at their fingertips that easy and quick will allow the national dollars to flow.”