Easy Does It

Brandweek,  Oct 30, 2000  by Karl Greenberg

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One Media Place's Les Margulis wants to ease the sometimes convoluted media buying process for traditional and interactive agencies.

Judging by the proliferation of online media buying platforms such as AdExchange, AdFusion and AdOutlet, the arrival of a process that would streamline the frequently labor-intensive and torpid RFP (request for proposal) system was a need fulfilled in media buying circles. For both traditional and interactive agencies, buying media through these exchanges may offer a way to float RFPs and insertion orders without a tsunami of faxes, e-mails or wasted paper. However, while it may seem reasonable for both interactive and offline shops to integrate their legacy systems with online ad exchanges, traditional agencies are still reluctant to get on board.

Enter Les Margulis, formerly senior vp and director of international media planning at BBDO. This April, Margulis left the New York-based agency--and a 30-year career as a traditional media planner--to join One Media Place (OMP) as senior vice president of agency relations.

At OMP, Margulis is engaged in a campaign to build the offline agency business and monetize buyer activity. OMP, founded in 1997 as AdAuction.com, the first online bidding-based media exchange, now has more than 250 top Internet publishers and 14,000 registered buyers of online and outdoor media. One Media Place hopes to become the central link in a back-end to back-end chain where most of the media buying process is automated. That, says Margulis, will transform OMP into something more than a place to look for inventory and send e-mails.

"[At first], One Media Place didn't have the credibility to walk into an agency and say, 'The world is changing, this is where it's going: "says Margulis. "My job is to translate Internet into the terminology and action plan that leaders in traditional agencies can understand."

The old, trusted model for traditional media buying is something of a Rube Goldberg machine, he says, functioning because agencies have large, low-paid back office staffs processing insertion orders. "They have an army of elderly ladies in Omaha opening envelopes, matching a bill with an order, and a bunch of young, eager kids who look at media plans, fax insertions orders, come in early, stay late and work weekends."

Margulis points out that, ironically, it was the very advent of the RFP which has accelerated the transaction of media deals from fixed prices to flexible pricing, a change that demands efficiency. "When I started, there was no such thing as an RFP," he says. "An RFP was when you rang the guy up, had a lunch date and set up insertions. Negotiations were over two or three martinis."

Now, most media is bought on RFP, he says, and it's hard to find media purchased at rate card prices. "In the old days, we were planning three months a year and basically going to lunch for nine months. Now the time factor is compressed. Most RFPs are next day, 48 hours max."

According to Margulis, OMP is working to make the process fast, easy and automated, so that OMP can grab a buyer's request, go to a database of sellers and pull out a preliminary response based on CPM, all without phone calls, e-mails or even human interaction. The key, he says, is a form of extensible mark-up language called AdXML, which allows an agency's legacy system, driven by Columbine, Donovan or Data-Tech, for instance, to engage in automated preliminary transactions with a seller's back-end. "It can link OMP to whatever pre-existing legacy system a buyer or seller has, and it's critical to anyone who wants to tie legacy systems to the Internet," he says, adding that OMP has been in discussions with agency technology committees for an official pilot AdXML program with all major agency groups.

So far, however, no traditional agency has signed on for that integrated back-end. Why the resistance? "Agencies don't work on saving money, but on new business," Marguiles notes. "The money they would save by downsizing doesn't compare to winning a billion dollar account with an automaker." He explains that most interest in AdXML comes from media independents "because their creative product is the media product." Still, he says, no one has signed on the dotted line. "But, as far as I know, no one has signed with our competitors, either."

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