Susan Kuchinskas (via John Battelle) reports on the status of a "competition" between Google and eBay to build a media buying platform/electronic exchange for national advertisers and traditional media. At the last Kelsey Group conference, we created a panel called "The Future of Local Media Buying: The Integrated Online-Offline Platform."
The idea behind the panel was, based on Google's experimentation with print and its acquistion of dmarc, that the Internet (or some equivalent digital dashboard) would become a comprehensive, integrated media buying platform for both online and traditional media.
That's what this appears to be about. Kuchinskas suggests it would also replace the TV "upfront." There are lots of implications if this comes to pass. More to come.
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Here's a lot more detail from MediaPost (reg. req'd) and AdAge (reg. req'd)
