GroupM has announced it is partnering with online advertising technology firm Facilitate Digital to mandate the use of Electronic Insertion Orders in digital media trading, allowing the group’s agencies to soon operate entirely automated processes across digital campaigns, removing all manual interventions.

The move is intended to reduce the cost and complexity associated with the planning, buying, selling and administration of digital campaigns. It will see the WPP-owned media agency group become the first in Australia to require all trading partners to confirm media buys with Electronic Insertion Orders.

The need to increase the efficiency of digital media trading comes as digital advertising spend in Australia approaches that of TV but is bogged down by inefficiencies, says Danny Bass, chief digital officer of GroupM: “Whereas traditional media activity largely stops once the spot is booked, a digital campaign will be booked then changed and optimised up to 15 times through its lifetime. The manual input required by buyers and sellers, and the associated risk of data corruption, makes costs unsustainably high for all.”

Every local GroupM agency – Mediacom, Mindshare, MEC and Maxus – will be on the all-automated platform by 1 January 2013, bringing Australia in line with Asian neighbour markets such as China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore where the Symphony Media program began implementation in 2010.