• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, Tom Siebert , December 8, 2006

With Julie Roehm--the pied piper of an online system to buy and sell media--now out at Wal-Mart, the natural question is whether the initiative may peter out. But marketers and agency executives who have lobbied for the project along with Roehm said the so-called e-Media Exchange remains on track for deployment next year.

And a marketing executive now on the front lines advocating the system said Thursday that he expects Wal-Mart to participate in the trial and eventual exchange itself, which will be operated by eBay.

"Julie is, of course, the spiritual beginning of the initiative--important in a lot of ways, but I have heard from the Wal-Mart people that they are most interested in staying involved and will be part of the process," said David Grubb, Microsoft's global media director. "The loss of one individual--she's a key piece--but there's a lot of momentum across a lot of fronts."

Bill Cella--vice chairman of DraftFCB Group, which won the Wal-Mart business and then lost it Thursday--said that since Roehm has been involved in running the Wal-Mart account review she's been a "low-key" player in the e-Media project recently. Cella is one of several top agency executives on the industry task force involved in developing the exchange.

Roehm, Wal-Mart's senior vice president-marketing communications until this week, began campaigning for a Nasdaq-style media buying-selling system last year when she was a marketing executive at DaimlerChrysler. News that Wal-Mart had decided to drop DraftFCB was first reported by AdAge.com.

In addition to Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Toyota and Hewlett-Packard are among the marketers eager to launch the project and on the task force, which is seeking to make the media buying process more transparent and efficient. On the agency side, Cella is joined by Carat's Ray Warren and PHD's Steve Grubbs in planning the online market.

"When you hear the word 'fax' in talking about buying and selling media, you quickly realize that these are processes that need to be brought into a new age," said Meredith Brace, media and integration manager, Hewlett-Packard, who is on the task force.

A final "pilot" version of the exchange is due from eBay soon, which will give the task force something tangible to demonstrate to networks in a bid to persuade them to participate. It could allow for networks to place inventory up for bid, or buyers to offer proposed spending networks would compete for, or both.

"We want to make sure it's working properly before giving it a look under the hood," Cella said.

Microsoft's Grubb said the plan is to launch the system during the second-quarter scatter market with marketers' aiming to pool $50 million to spend, most likely on cable networks.

So far, no network has committed to participate, believing it could turn their inventory into a "commodity" and hinder the movement toward selling integrated packages that include not only spots and dots, but product placement and off-net extensions.

"We're hearing varying levels of interest," Grubb said. "No firm commitments, but we've heard good things. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing--the networks want to see the buyers (join), the buyers want to see the networks."

One cable sales executive--who would not be named but has been approached about placing inventory up for bid--said he was once adamantly opposed to the system, but has since softened his view on the grounds that it could be "additive" and not alter the traditional deal-making process.

Cella characterized it as "a partnership between buyer and seller."

Still, a survey conducted by the Jack Myers Media Business Report last month found that only 12.5% of advertisers believe the online auction has a "very good" or "excellent" chance of succeeding. An additional 28% of advertisers said the auction has "some" potential.

"If we didn't have some skepticism out there, we wouldn't be making enough change," said Microsoft's Grubb.