"Selling on the road" - Pilat Media demonstrates wireless route to commercial airtime sales

Information Release: 25 March 2002

London, 25 March 2002 - On its stand L4922 at NAB 2002, (Las Vegas Convention Centre, April 8-11) leading software solutions provider, Pilat Media will be demonstrating how it can help broadcast sales representatives to sell advertising airtime more efficiently while they are on the road.

Using PDAs supplied by Compaq, the demonstrations will show how Pilat Media clients could gain real-time access to the new advertising sales modules of the Integrated Broadcast Management System (IBMS) while they are at a customer site.

Using the latest wireless transmission technologies, up-to-the minute feedback on the status of a particular commercial campaign, for example, could be available to the salesman in tabular form at the touch of a button on his PDA. This instant access to key information would help make the process of taking advertising bookings much quicker and easier than with traditional manual processes.

The new application is also easy to use. The salesman accesses a simple standard interface which, if required, can be customised to meet his specific needs. "Our IBMS system has a flexible open architecture, which makes it ideal for this sort of application," said Pilat Media's chief technology officer, Bob Lamb.

"To succeed in today's competitive commercial climate, advertising sales systems must support more proactive selling, as the success of our cross-media advertising sales modules has already demonstrated. We believe this new wireless application takes this approach a significant step further."

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Notes to editors:

Pilat Media is a UK company, currently 150 strong, operating from headquarters in London and offices in the USA, Australia and Israel.

Pilat Media's IBMS (Integrated Broadcast Management System) is a new generation software system for managing the business of broadcasting. It is the world's most comprehensive solution, designed to maximize revenues and reduce costs by integrating airtime sales, content programming and media trafficking across an unlimited number of different channels or stations, regions or even countries, all under a single centralized, scalable and digital ready system. Al these have been historically serviced by several, typically dispersed systems. IBMS' functional breadth, depth and flexibility to suit all types of broadcasters are unrivalled, making it the first truly global system of its kind.

IBMS' first version was originally developed by Pilat for BSkyB, to support their fast growing multi-channel programming needs. Pilat Media was established in 1999 to further develop and market the system as a generic product. IBMS's scope was subsequently more than doubled by adding the advertising sales functionality in partnership with Network Ten of Australia. Since then Pilat Media has rapidly established itself as a rising force in the market for business management software for broadcasters. Today, Pilat Media's software solutions have been selected by 35 broadcasters in Europe, North America and Australasia, representing a wide spectrum of business models, organizational size and transmission technologies - digital and analogue, on terrestrial, cable and satellite platforms. Additional clients include CTV (Canada), Discovery (International), five (UK), TV New Zealand, Playboy (US), Sky Italia and TV4 (Sweden).