New Offering Increases Efficiency and Accuracy via Electronic Proposal Exchange between Agencies and Publishers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In an effort to streamline the online media direct sales process, DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today unveiled a new electronic proposal exchange platform for its publisher and agency customers. The new integration automates the media request for proposal (RFP) process via seamless data exchange between DART® Sales Manager (DSM), an end-to-end workflow and financial management solution for publishers, and DART® for Advertisers’ (DFA) MediaVisor planning tool. Also today, DoubleClick further strengthened its integrated platform for media sellers by announcing the release of an adapter designed to allow the seamless exchange of data between DSM and Salesforce CRM, salesforce.com’s industry-leading suite of CRM applications.

DoubleClick’s new proposal exchange platform is built upon application agnostic standards, which will ultimately allow for broader integration with other advertising technology solutions. The company has worked closely with the IAB in their efforts to establish a consistent standard for electronic order exchange across the online advertising industry. Establishing a common proposal exchange standard will also allow for better automation of discrepancy reconciliation – another key challenge for buyers and sellers of digital media.

In a 2007 survey of its ad agency clients, DoubleClick confirmed that the majority of the media RFP and contract process is still handled manually—via the exchange of emails, spreadsheets and faxes. Respondents also named lack of internal coordination at publishers and inaccurate proposal responses as top concerns. More than 70% of agencies responding said that a publisher’s use of an automated proposal tool would positively influence their decision to send that publisher an RFP. By digitizing and standardizing the RFP process, publishers are also expected to benefit from increased operational efficiency and accuracy, while advertisers will enjoy faster response times and more accurate proposals.

With DoubleClick’s new electronic order exchange feature, agencies can select DSM-enabled publishers directly from the MediaVisor planning tool. Selected publishers receive an electronic request for proposal directly within the DSM interface and can check inventory, build a proposal, and respond electronically. Once approved, the proposed media package can be trafficked by the publisher directly into DART for Publishers. Previously, publishers had to manually enter their proposals within MediaVisor for each advertiser in addition to their own system, often a time consuming and error-prone process. Currently, more than 20 publishers are testing the new order exchange platform including BabyCenter.com and Mansueto Ventures.

Also announced today was the release of a Salesforce.com adapter that allows DART Sales Manager to exchange data with this leading customer relationship management solution to deliver increased transparency throughout the ad sales cycle. The new adapter synchronizes opportunities and proposal information as well as sales data between the two systems, creating a more seamless end-to-end media sales solution.

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help digital advertising scale by developing platforms that bring advertisers and publishers together,” said Group Product Manager Jonathan Bellack. “Our new proposal exchange platform reduces operational friction by eliminating error-prone manual data entry. In addition, our tight integration with Salesforce.com continues to develop DART Sales Manager’s mission to enable an integrated quote to cash solution for publisher sales teams.”

I’ve stated many times before, in many, many meetings, that at least 70% of our business can be automated. Forty percent of all online ad dollars are allocated towards search, which has proven to be able to be massively scaled and semi-automated using the tools in the marketplace. Of the remaining 60%, at least half (based on my estimates) is spent on ad networks and against ROS or RON general inventory, with larger sites at a low cost CPM.

These buys are optimized against CPC, CPA and other metrics, most of which can be entered into a system and automated. That translates to about 30% of all online budgets on top of the 40% allocated to search — which means 70% of the online budgets should be able to scale and be managed via automated, or at least semi-automated, systems. That doesn’t mean there will be no creativity in our sector; it means that the remaining 30% of the budgets (not an insignificant amount of dollars) is allocated towards a craft. It is allocated toward sponsorships, integration, promotions and more creative uses of the budget. This is where media planners can apply creativity — and this is where they should be focusing their time and attention.

Automation is inevitable, if you examine the forecasts for spending against the category, versus the issue of human resource capital that is obviously facing our business. Simply put, there are not enough people to handle the current jobs – a problem that most likely will not be fixed in the next two years. No; the answer lies in automation, but for that automation to occur, we need to see some standardization in the basic part of the business.

First of all, we need to see the industry create standard lead times for planning and implementing campaigns. We can’t have every other client ask for a campaign to be planned and implemented in 48 hours. This process creates errors and inefficiencies because people overlook the details.

Second, we need to see these tools tied into inventory management systems on the side of the publishers. Ours is a dynamic marketplace and the back and forth between sales reps and planners creates inefficiencies because the market moves faster than they can. Supply and demand are changing rapidly; trying to keep up with these changes causes rifts in relationships that would be avoided if the process were automated.

Thirdly, and this is possibly the hardest infrastructure issue to address, we need a formal training process for these tools in the marketplace. When you work in television, you learn Donovan Data Systems at the same time you learn how to use Excel. It’s just a basic tool. Agencies need to invest in the future of training and using these tools, by either partnering with the folks creating them, or flat-out buying those companies and tailoring them to their needs. Some agencies have gone very far down this road by creating their own analytics systems, but these need to be earlier stage and applied to planning. If not, this situation will just get worse over the next two years.

And, yes, I keep saying two years because I think that is the crucial time period. I assume that the current recession in the U.S. will last another 12-18 months and we will see an upturn going into year two, which gives us that time to get our ducks in a row, so to speak.

So if you are working on these tools, let’s get moving already. If you are in need of these tools, let’s get a movin’! Time is a wastin’!

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