iSocket Launches iFA (iSocket For Advertisers)
Removes Time, Cost and Pain for Buyers and Sellers of Guaranteed Inventory
San Francisco – iSocket, the leader in programmatic direct and sales automation, today announced that it has launched iFA (iSocket for Advertisers), an automated way to buy premium, guaranteed inventory that saves both buyers and sellers time and expense while dramatically reducing the chance of errors.
“iFA is a powerful, but easy-to-use media-buying tool for premium, fixed price reserved inventory. iFA is unique in that it gives buyers programmatic access to the same well-defined, high-impact ad units available only through direct sales such as homepage, above-the-fold, section-specific, and rising stars,” says Richard Jalichandra, CEO, iSocket. “In short, iFA preserves the inventory and placement quality that buyers are accustomed to with direct sales, while making it easier and more efficient to buy premium, guaranteed inventory.”
In 2013 alone, $14 billion was spent on directly sold digital media, and almost all of it was executed manually through spreadsheet proposals, paper contracts, IOs, emails, and faxes. When executed manually, the average direct sale can take as many as 50 steps to complete, and can require as many as a dozen people. iSocket’s technology automates many of those steps, dramatically increasing the productivity of buyers, sellers and operations personnel, while reducing delays, discrepancies, and the potential for human error.
Buyers such as agencies, media planning platforms, and direct advertisers can browse iFA’s publisher catalog and buy well-defined, reserved inventory directly from any of iSocket’s publishers, which include Microsoft, Condé Nast, Reuters, and Forbes, all in a simple interface that can be seamlessly integrated with other enterprise systems.
“iFA is a perfect complement to our iFP sales automation suite for publishers,” says Mr. Jalichandra. “Direct media buys are faster and easier to execute when buyers have access all our high-quality publishers in one place. Publishers set up their best inventory in iSocket, because there’s no opportunity cost for working with us. We plug directly into publishers’ primary ad servers, unlike SSPs, which is how we can access reserved inventory. Automation means publishers can set lower minimum buying thresholds or execute even the largest orders with little effort.”
iSocket recently announced $5 million in new funding led by Time Warner Investments, with participation by Condé Nast.
iSocket (www.iSocket.com) is a technology platform purpose-built to simplify the buying and selling of fixed price, premium, reserved inventory. iSocket For Publishers (iFP) sales automation and programmatic direct tools allow top publisher sales teams to focus on relationships and strategy, while iSocket For Advertisers (iFA) makes it easier for agencies, brands, and buying and planning platforms to execute orders of well-defined, guaranteed inventory directly with top publishers. Through automation, iSocket is able to eliminate many of the errors and overhead costs that plague the manual media sales process.
