The Outdoor Media Association (OMA) has today announced that a shortlist of eight companies/consortiums have been invited to submit a Request for Proposal (RfP) to build the Australian Out-of-Home (OOH) industry’s world first Automated Transaction Platform (ATP).

“We are embarking on this ambitious world first with unanimous industry support and obvious interest from home and abroad.

“We learned a lot from building our audience measurement system MOVE and the ATP will build on this success. We want to make the transactions of briefing, proposal evaluation, booking and billing OOH as seamless and easy as possible, with credible data included that helps agencies and clients better utilise the benefits of our channel,” said Grant Guesdon, chief architect of the project and General Manager of MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure).

Twenty one companies/consortiums from Australia and overseas submitted an Expression of Interest (EOI). All companies/consortiums who submitted an EOI were interviewed by the OMA giving each an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities, and following this, the short list of eight proponents was drawn.

On 9 March 2016, the RfP was delivered to the shortlist, detailing the specifications and standards required by the industry to build the platform.

“We believe the ATP will amalgamate our industry and create real time savings for planners and buyers of our channel, giving them fast access to visualise information about their campaigns and audiences, as well as the evaluation process. This was a very competitive EOI and it was a hard task shortlisting twenty one very solid bids down to eight. The EOI process has also allowed us to gain great insights into the technology that is available out there,” continued Guesdon.

Wirth Consulting were contracted to write the Technical Specification for the RfP. Further announcements about the successful RfP proponents will be released in the coming months.