Commercial radio industry automated holdings system RadioMATRIX now live and operational

Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) today announced that radio holdings – the first step in the industries common automated trading platform to operate across the entire radio and media industry in Australia – is live and operational.

Created by AudioNET the automated holding software RadioMATRIX will allow agencies to interact with all radio stations’ traffic management systems electronically without the paper trail. 

The sophisticated software has been tested by agencies and stations throughout the third quarter of 2017. More than 80 leading advertising agencies and 260 radio stations will be using the system.

RadioMATRIX allows a media agency to view radio spots that are perfectly matched to their system, as well as spots that have been changed and allow them to accept the changes or query them with the station.

Says Joan Warner, chief executive officer, CRA: “The industry has achieved this milestone by working from day one as a united industry with a clear focus and objective. Subsequently we have achieved this in a very short period of time.

“AudioNET has also worked diligently on the implementation of the system which has simplified the interaction between the media buyer and a radio station, making buying radio ads a much easier process.”

Says Dave Cox (above), chief executive officer, AudioNET: “There are almost 7,000 new agency bookings each month that currently agencies and networks collectively spend 126,000 hours per year manually managing. AudioNET’s RadioMATRIX platform will see CRA stations reduce this to just a few minutes per day.”

Says Victor Corones, Magna managing director and Chair of the Media Federation of Australia’s Systems Committee: “The commercial radio industry and AudioNET have implemented an effective system that is a leading solution for interaction between radio stations and agencies and should be congratulated. This is an Australian first for Radio.  Taking an industry collaborative approach is a significant step forward allowing the industry to gear up for the future.” 

Click here for a vox pop from CRA Automation and Programmatic Committee chair, NOVA Entertainment chief executive officer, Cathy O’Connor on the industry’s automated holdings initiative.