• Ad Age, Monday, September 17, 2007 11:45 AM

OpenAd.net--a Slovenian-based online marketplace where ad and design ideas from about 9,000 creatives worldwide are bought and sold--is quietly being tested by major U.S. marketers such as Gillette. It plans to establish a physical presence here in coming months.

Marketers can purchase ideas or submit briefs of their own and choose from ideas that it inspires, which is what Procter & Gamble's Gillette division did this summer to persuade men in Puerto Rico to trade in their disposable razors for the Fusion shaver. The razor maker opened a pitch that was eventually won by Live 1, an Indian agency that came up with the idea "She knows the difference." It then went back to the OpenAd well to get guidance on how the idea could be fleshed out in four different media: TV, print, promotions and interactions.

This kind of online marketplace doesn't offer the strategic guidance, account management or executional capabilities that agencies have--a fact that one of its founders, Katarina Skoberne, readily owns up to. "In an ideal world," she says, "agencies will use OpenAd on behalf of clients."

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