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Cable Nets Say ‘No Way’ to eBay Media Marketplace

Members of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau have tested the eBay Media Marketplace and, finding it lacking, have decided to boycott the exchange.

“We don’t believe that eBay is going to get this right,” Sean Cunningham, president and chief executive of the Bureau, is quoted as saying in The New York Times. Without the participation of cable networks - which marketplace committee members had been counting on to provide the marketplace with ad inventory - the eBay exchange may be dead in the water.

Seven national cable networks, including Turner Networks, Discovery, Lifetime and ESPN, tested the exchange over the last month. According to Cunningham, they decided the exchange went too far in removing the human element from the equation.

In recent years, ad buying for television has moved from a strict purchase of slots based on price to an integrated process that can include promotions, value-adds, product integrations, and interactive buys.
“By going to this online bidding system that eBay was sharing with us, we’d be taking a step backwards,” said John Muszynski, chief executive of Starcom.

The group of companies that has worked with eBay to build the marketplace has said that it will attempt to recruit other media companies to use the exchange. They also said they will continue to court the cable networks, pointing out that the marketplace was never meant to support custom marketing programs.

The struggle that the marketplace is facing calls into question Google’s chances of success with its most recent venture: the use of its automated platform to sell ads on EchoStar DISH Network’s 125 networks.