Online Media Kits Streamline the Planning Process Best Sites For Media Planning In an era in which all sorts of corporate and product information are routinely available online, for media
companies the posting of media kits online would seem a no-brainer. When it comes to media planning, checking out media kits is a basic part of the process. Today, nobody wants to wait for information
to be delivered overland when it impacts critical, time-sensitive decisions. Nevertheless, an astonishingly high percentage of media properties have yet to post media kits online. For planners
cruising cyberspace for online media kits, going from site to site in the hopes of finding the desired information is an arduous, irritating endeavor. There is no standard way of presenting
information for advertisers on Websites, and no guarantee that the information is there at all. Visitors to KnightRidder.com are hard pressed to find any information about the publisher’s periodicals,
let alone media kits—for the simple reason that that Website no longer has anything to do with the papers. But it takes a while to figure this out. More typical are Websites that offer advertisers
information about themselves, but not the media venue that attracts viewers to the sites in the first place. “Publishing is still in the dark ages when it comes to using the Internet as a source of
B2B information,” says William Duke, who runs Magazinedata—a new media consultancy. “Some publishers are concerned that if planners can get media kits online, they will lose sales opportunities, but
they are not thinking strategically. Fortunately, there are a number of media kit-related sites that make the planner’s job significantly easier; and although some require subscription fees, they are
well worth the cost for those who value their time and sanity, even modestly. The granddaddy of media database companies, SRDS, is an 80-year-old, Chicago-based firm that has built a business out of
publishing information for media planners and advertisers. Historically, SRDS has taken media kits and advertising-related information from a wide variety of media and has published directories that
present essential information in standardized formats for easy comparison purposes. In the case of magazines, for example, SRDS directory listings include rates, circulation, advertising personnel,
advertising opportunities, editorial calendars, issue and closing dates, mechanical specs and production/traffic information. The only data typically included in traditional media kits that SRDS does
not incorporate is research-related demographic and psychographic information. To date, SRDS has varying databases for business publications, consumer magazines, radio, Websites and direct mail
available online. Newspapers will be online shortly, says George Carens, SRDS vice president of Marketing, and TV and cable are in the works. The cost of SRDS services runs from $467 to $649,
depending upon the medium. Another good source of online media kit-type information for planners and buyers is MediaStart.com, which currently offers information on over a thousand magazines. Although
MediaStart offers far fewer listings than its more established rival, its information is free and its databases are growing rapidly. With the addition of a trade magazine database ,in August, the
number of magazines listed will grow to over 4,000, says Fred F. Rapaport, publisher for MediaStart; and an online database of some 3,000 sites will be launched in the 4th quarter. “Twenty-five
percent of the magazines that MediaStart lists have online media kits,” says Rapaport, “which is pretty small when you think about it. I would say that the number of printed publications offering
online media kits has either plateaued or possibly even decreased over the past year. “That’s because it is unclear if it’s a benefit to publishers to hold that information out in front of their
regular readers, even if it is buried down at the bottom of the page. That’s certainly nothing they have ever done in their printed magazine. I also think it’s a nuisance for them to keep the online
media kits up to date. And because every magazine that has an online media kit has created and designed it differently, it’s become a hunt and peck for media planners to find the information. They
like readily available, easy-to-find information.” — Larry Estridge
