Lastminuteinventory.com goes live on Diwali day

The full-fledged commercial launch of the portal will happen on New Year’s Day

Dentsu Media had announced mid-year that it would launch an online trading portal, Lastminuteinventory.com, which would auction unsold ad inventory across media. Lastminuteinventory.com will go live for trading from Diwali day.

Lastminuteinventory.com goes live on Diwali day

Sandeep Goyal

Confirming that trading would commence on the auspicious occasion of Diwali, Sandeep Goyal, chairman, Last Minute Media, says, “From Diwali day onwards, micro-sites will start to be handed over to our media partners. From Diwali to New Year’s Day, trading will ramp up on a day-to-day basis. The site will go live-commercial from January 1, 2008.”

Lastminuteinventory.com is an online real-time media exchange portal, dedicated to trading and making inventory available with media owners till the very last minute. It is a portal that provides a new buying channel for media owners to reach and engage with geographically dispersed media buyers, both big and small.

The website will be owned and operated by an independent company, Last Minute Media. The move is presumably to maintain neutrality in operations. “(The company) will operate as an independent corporate entity at arm’s length relationship with its equity owners,” says Sharat Jain, CEO, Dentsu Media.

Membership to Lastminuteinventory.com will be through paid subscriptions. The membership is open to media owners, advertisers and media agencies. Media owners can place their inventory directly on the site.

“Advertisers and agencies can browse and evaluate the available inventory and then bid for it or buy it outright,” says Jain.

This feature of the platform puts unprecedented power in the hands of media owners, who can decide what rates to sell the inventory at. Media owners can also decide how advertisers or agencies buy their inventory. They can either choose to sell the inventory at a fixed price or by inviting bids.

The site will remain password protected while Dentsu gears up for a full commercial launch in the new year.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com