Just two weeks after we announced our product for Publishers and only 4 days after TechInsights launched their implementation, Sports Illustrated and eBay have teamed to launch the SI Media Marketplace. 

Regardless of the competitive issues (I’ll get to that later) it’s great to see more players in this space.  My advice to publishers in a recent post, the Ad Network Conundrum, called for publishers to be looking at other ways to more efficiently and effectively sell their advertising inventory.  These two announcements are great examples of forward-thinking publishers pushing the envelope and taking the next step in ad sales - a step that doesn’t sacrifice 90% of their revenue (or their brand).  To see a great example of how TechInsights is positioning TechInsights Direct to their media buyers, check out this link (fancy flash video).

Now, although this announcement is obviously a good thing for the industry and Balihoo, I can’t let it go without calling out some of the specific differences between this solution and Balihoo Publisher Edition: 

• This is an auction-based site (hence eBay) while Balihoo Publisher Edition is fixed-pricing.  We feel a fixed-price system is more representative of how premium publishers want to represent their brand and their inventory.
• Mark Ford, President of Sports Illustrated, stated that actually closing the deal after the auction required human intervention.  This is not the case with Balihoo, the entire buy can happen in a self-service model (although a user can talk to a salesperson if needed). 
• Although they dance around the issue a bit, it seems this product is primarily for time-sensitive (hence expiring soon) inventory.  Balihoo Publisher Edition is designed to do a equally good job at selling all inventory - premium, standard or remnant. 
• It’s unclear exactly what’s offered in the system - but one of the key benefits of Balihoo is the ability for a publisher to bundle inventory together across mediums and properties

This is a case where it’s great for us to see another player enter the market, it’s good to have competition!