Digitalroot Rolls Out Online Media Marketplace Product

Online media buying automation firm digitalroot rolled out its MediAssistant service Tuesday, designed to help media buyers and sellers transact their business online.

The system enters an extremely crowded field of media marketmakers, a situation that is helped only marginally by the proposed merger of two players last week, OneMediaPlace and MediaPassage. Other players include AdOutlet.com, BuyMedia.com, imediabuy and AdFlight.

Digitalroot’s service basically works like this: requests for proposals submitted through the MediAssistant service are passed onto digitalroot’s affiliated publishers. RFPs are also posted online so that publishers can bid online. digitalroot then guarantees the best matching quote to the advertiser within 48 hours.

“All advertisers care about now is getting cost-effective advertising that is high in quality and low in hassles. More importantly, they want this information yesterday,” said Ashwin Verma, digitalroot’s vice president of corporate development.

The company says it is already seeing interest in MediaAssistant from agencies and advertisers.

New York City-based digitalroot’s previous offerings enable advertisers to automate the online advertising process from banner ad creation to the buy itself. The do-it-yourself ad sales and optimization service appeals to smaller advertisers, who can’t afford sizable sales staffs or creative budgets.

The company also has a service that allows small businesses to aggregate their media buys, allowing them to purchase impressions in bulk on high-cost sites, which previously had prohibitively expensive minimum buy requrements.