Havas Digital has partnered with online ad marketplace Traffiq to help automate online media planning and buying in the agency's offices in New York, Boston and Chicago. The Traffiq platform is intended to provide Havas with a single system for handling everything from planning and RFP distribution to order execution, optimization and billing.

It also allows media planners to negotiate and buy inventory from Web publishers on a one-to-one basis, or to propose campaigns more widely. The online media buying process has long been faulted for requiring numerous steps involving faxes and emails back and forth from the time an ad is conceived until it runs on a publisher site and is billed.

One-stop-shop platforms like Traffiq aim to streamline that workflow -- allowing agencies and publishers to spend more time focusing on higher-level priorities, like building their business. "If the Internet is a 30,000-channel world, it makes it very difficult to buy efficiently and directly into that market. But Traffiq makes that all very seamless," said the company's CEO Mark Kahn.

He pointed out that the service also includes reporting and free ad serving as well as integration with common third-party ad-serving technologies like Atlas and DoubleClick's DART.

For its part, Havas emphasized the ability to use the platform for gaining greater control over where campaigns run online in contrast to blind ad networks. "There are many tools that assist in the ad buying process, but Traffiq is unique because it provides complete visibility and control over the exact placements of online ads," said Marta Martinez, senior vice president of corporate partnerships at Havas Digital, in a statement.

Kahn said New York-based Traffiq has worked with smaller agencies previously, but that Havas represented the largest partnership it has forged to date for its online ad system. He added that the company is in talks with other agencies, including another ad holding company, to adopt its platform.

This news story is important. I recommend that everyone read it.