LilBirdie launch sees first media group buying site
Australia’s group buying craze has reached the media and advertising industry with the launch of LilBirdie, a site that offers advertisers media space at a hefty discount.
The site is the brainchild of PR and former AdNews editor Samantha Tannous and Jonathan Levy, boss of brand experience monitoring agency Bravo.
Levy said: “This is not about distress space or hard-to-shift inventory. LilBirdie is about opportunities for the media and potential advertisers to learn more about each other, to take part in a dialogue and importantly, to secure amazing deals.”
Interesting concept, clumsy name.
Anyone who’s advertised offers on consumer group buying sites will tell you to be careful — group buying models can deliver more buyers than you expect.
In advertising media that could be particularly fraught with difficulty — over-sold inventory, choke points in production and scheduling, etc.
Great idea though, hope it goes really well.
Pretty sure i stumbled across http://www.mediaspa.com.au late 2010 although it dosnt look like it has launched yet. also Mediascope has been connecting brands and buyers for 2 years now, although dosnt offer group buying. Been in direct sales, its a great idea to get your inventory discovered. although solution/strategy is hard to roll out when you are waiting on group buy in.
I’m fascinated to see how this goes – will this really lead to repeat custom for advertisers or will it just end up as a way to shift less popular ad slots and spaces?
In 2000, an organisation called XS-Media launched the first media group buying site and included a free directory of the various media products for agency media staff and marketers to reference. XS-Media was an unsuccessful dotcom start-up with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Hong Kong and Sinapore.
Hopefully the business model proves to be more successful a decade on.
I also stumbled across this recently too, not sure if it’s going ahead or not… Much better name! (Site: http://www.mediamarket.com.au)
Glad to be on your radar PN – though we have been going for a little over 1 year now (seems longer some days 🙂 – and you are right in saying we are not a group buying platform (exchange, dsp, rtb etc etc either)
Our aim is to continue to aggregate media buying choice through an easy to use central directory resource. This includes advertising buying platforms in various forms which will be increasingly available to marketers.
In the group buying market – just last week we added listings for over 25 sites (albeit mostly retail) and will continue to populate this category as it inevitably evolves into multiple niche markets.
Congratulations to Samantha and Jonathon from Lil Birdie – I wish them all the best.
great idea! be very interesting to see how Lil Birdie goes; fly or fail. On the face, seems like an effective way for media owners to offload surplus/distressed inventory – although I am sure Lil Birdies owners will argue the site will offer much more than this.
What about a site to cater for the blind auctions that occur regularly for more premium ad inventory such as AFL games and prime time on the box, mag covers or survey promos on the wireless..?? We could call it an ‘selective individual buying site’ 😛