• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 13, 2004

Teletrax, a highly regarded electronic media verification system that has been quietly operating around the fringes of the advertising marketplace, Thursday unveiled plans to enter the ad verification fray, going up against such entrenched players as Audio Audit, Verance, Nielsen and Taylor Nelson Sofres.

Teletrax, a unit of public relations distributor and researcher Medialink, Thursday announced two deals to begin verifying advertising buys for Internet Broadcasting System (IBS), a Web-based provider of local news content in the U.S.; and Media Review International, a broadcast monitoring service in Australia.

While Teletrax has had designs on the U.S. advertising marketplace, its roots were in verifying public relations mentions in electronic media, as well as monitoring and measuring news programming content. Early deals included NBC and Reuters. It recently struck a deal with Universal Television to begin tracking its on-air promo spots on stations carrying its syndicated TV programming.

It announced the advertising verification deals Thursday at the American Association of Advertising Agencies Media Conference and Trade Show in Orlando, an event where advertising verification has been a primary focus.

"In order to determine that we are fully leveraging the audience reach of television to direct attention to our online advertisers, we will rely on Teletrax to deliver proof that the 'push' of TV is indeed working in tandem with the 'pull' of the Web," said Ken Rees, senior vice president of IBS. MRI's Managing Director Brendan Sheedy noted that more than 16 million radio and TV commercials run each year in Australia and that Teletrax would become the heart of its verification system.