TVB ePort passes half-billion mark in order volume

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TVB ePort, the electronic bridge that enables eBusiness transactions between stations, agencies and rep firms, has passed the half-billion-dollar mark in order volume, it was announced by the Television Bureau of Advertising, and the momentum was underlined by a particularly strong Q4.


“This is an important milestone on the way to our goal of making local broadcast television the medium that is easiest to buy and steward,” said TVB President Steve Lanzano.  “We are looking for big growth in the year ahead.”

Abby Auerbach, TVB’s executive vice president who has spearheaded the ePort effort, said, “2010 will be a big year for ePort. With new agencies coming aboard every month and buy/sell systems completing their change management interfaces, we look forward to tremendous volume growth for ePort this year…and lots of happy customers.”

Total ePort volume through the year-end 2009 was $584,289,000, and the fourth quarter was 24% higher than 3Q 2009, which was the previous high-water mark.

“We have a lot of happy AEs and assistants who processed well over 450 orders in a 24-hour period,” said Tom McNaboe, senior business analyst, ABC National Television Sales.  “It used to take them days to process manually.”

Lindy Sieker, local broadcast buying strategist, Empower MediaMarketing, said: “ePort is a godsend for buyers.  I just wish now the radio stations would come up with something like this.  Thanks to the television broadcasters for developing this program and rolling it out when they did.”

Over 127,000 orders have been sent by 150 agencies/advertisers via ePort to over 1,000 TV stations and all of the national rep firms over the past two years.  Agencies and advertisers continue to sign on to ePort, recently including Hoffman York, Intermark Group, Publicis Group Media, and Sleepy’s.

Additional vendors, such as Harris, MediaBank, OneDomain and WideOrbit, continue to develop to enhance their ePort interfaces. For smaller advertisers and agencies without buy systems, spot TV business can be processed through ePort Connect, a special web-based service of ePort.

TVB ePort, funded by local television broadcasters, is an electronic bridge over which any trading partner (buyer, station, rep) can send any transaction (e.g., order, makegood) and from which any trading partner can receive any transaction, whether national or local.   It is funded entirely by broadcasters and is free to customers.