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Trading technology company Brandscreen in administration

BrandscreenMedia trading technology company Brandscreen has entered administration, Mumbrella understands.

The company, founded by Australians Julian Tol and Seth Yates, applied for administration on December 31. Established in Australia in 2006 Brandscreen developed the algorithms and systems to enable real-time bidding and programmatic media buying to media agencies.

In recent years the company has looked to expand into Asia, and last April made a series of high-profile appointments including former News Limited chief operations officer Stuart Spiteri as president and chief revenue officer, and former CBS general manager Jo Gaines as chief revenue officer for Australia.

However it is believed Google’s launch of a rival offering in the market substantially lowered the company’s market share. Other sources suggest that an internal dispute between the company’s founders led to the move into administration.

It has offices in Singapore and China, with sources suggesting the Chinese operation has also been wound up this week.

In October last year, Brandscreen announced that internet media buying in Asia on its platform was moving away from a dependence on Google. The volume of Google ads bought through Brandscreen fell from 86 per cent of all impressions in 2011 to 40 per cent in the third quarter of 2013, the company reported.

One month later, Brandscreen struck a deal with Baidu to make the Chinese search engine’s inventory available on Brandscreen’s media buying platform.

Toll

Toll

Yates spent six years with Fairfax from 2002 and rising to chief technology officer before leaving in 2008. His LinkedIn profile says he stopped working with Brandscreen this month, and he is also on the project management committee for the IAB’s OpenRTB group.

Tol has experience in startups successfully helping The Campaign Centre Europe set up in 1993 and sell to Publicis Groupe in 1996, and has led Mundocom in Europe.

Programatic  trading of online media space has exploded in recent years, with Brandscreen providing both software and data to media agencies and linking with publishers’ platforms.

No-one at the company could be reached for comment at the time of publication.

Alex Hayes

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