• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, February 22, 2011

The last few months have seen a spate of new services offering online platforms for buying and selling radio advertising inventory. TheMediaDash.com, an online media trading platform from a media and advertising technology company of the same name, is set to lauch sometime in the second quarter.

Founded by CEO Drew Hilles, a founder of dMarc Broadcasting and then a senior executive with Google, and COO Rob Williams, who previously served as a senior manager for Clear Channel in New York City, TheMediaDash.com platform intends "to enhance and simplify the purchase and sale of radio advertising," according to Hilles. THe goal is to make it as easy "to conduct a transaction as it is to buy Internet advertising online."

As noted, the past few months have brought a series of advances for online platforms for radio ad sales.

Last month Arbitron revealed plans to integrate TAPSCAN with Proposal XML in response to demands from media buyers, which will allow buyers to purchase local radio ad inventory seamlessly with other media. The integration should be complete sometime in the second quarter.

Separately, Arbitron and Marketron announced their plans to integrate TAPSCAN and Marketron's Exchange, which handles media transactions, to create a fully automated, Web-based sales and traffic platform for radio advertising.

The service, which debuted earlier this month, covers all stages of the sales process from initial proposal through fulfillment, ratings information and invoicing -- making "business processes that are manual and very labor intensive instantaneous and completely accurate," according to Marketron CEO Steven Minisini.

It is touted as "eliminating discrepancies that result in millions of dollars of lost revenue," he adds.