INTERNET SERVICE MAY LOOK FOR AGENCY
By Adnews Staff
Johnson Computer Software Team of Toronto has formed a new division to help advertising agencies in North America buy and book media over the Internet. Division president Peter Hebb told Adnews yesterday that the company definitely plans on advertising and may look for an agency in the fall. Plans are still being finalized, but the company will likely hire a small creative shop and do its media buying in-house, Hebb said. The budget for the account will be under $1 million.
The division is called NetAccess.JCST. It's first service, called Buyers.Access, will be available in September. With this service, subscribers will be able to electronically access data from Maclean Hunter's Canadian Advertising Rates and Data, the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement television and radio surveys and from the Audit Bureau of Circulation print circulations. This service will be available to agencies currently subscribing to one of the content providers, and will let the user make computations such as rolling averages, trends and top ten in markets. Booking.Access will be available by the end of the year, and will let media buyers keep track of what's available, book media buys and generate insertion orders. Other services to be made available over the next 18 months are Time.Access, Client.Access, Production.Access and Full.Access. Time.Access is a time entry and management system with output for standard accounting packages. Client.Access allows agencies to publish completed media schedules for their clients. Production.Access is a planning and management tool for agency production departments and Full.Access provides end-to-end software systems for all aspects of agency operation, management, billing and accounting.
Peter Hebb recently joined Net.Access JCST as president. Most recently he was president and founder of pgh Marketing of Toronto. That agency is still operating while Hebb decides what to do with it. He is considering the possibility of an employee buy out, or selling to another company. A decision will be made by September. JCST was founded in 1982, developing client/server software for the financial, publishing and advertising industries.