Platform Connects High-Volume, Transactional Mailers and Advertisers to Leverage White Space on Statements

STAMFORD, Conn. – Pitney Bowes Inc. today introduced the MarketSpace Web platform in the U.S. to help high-volume transactional mailers connect with third-party advertisers to sell the white space on their statements for targeted advertising opportunities. With the MarketSpace Web platform, third-party advertisers can select and purchase advertising placements based on demographic and geographic targeting for more effective customer communications.

"We believe that advertising on transactional statements with specific offers and messages that are of interest to the recipient can help build more effective relationships than inserts due to targeting opportunities and the longevity of statements."

The MarketSpace Web platform leverages Pitney Bowes software to dynamically find white or unused space on transactional documents such as statements or bills, analyze the document recipient, match the recipient to an advertiser's target segment and place the appropriate message without the burden of complete document redesign. This is conducted in a highly-secure environment with no recipient data leaving the document owner's internal network. Third-party advertisers can use profile information to purchase space on transactional documents for specific targeted audience segments.

"Our new MarketSpace Web platform provides a simple and easy way for high-volume transactional mailers to make their white space available on transactional statements to help increase revenue opportunities, while minimizing infrastructure investments," said Ramesh Ratan, president, Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies. "In addition, our new platform offers advertisers a convenient way to target advertising placements based on specific demographic modeling to help communicate more effective messages to customers and prospects."

Pitney Bowes is collaborating with direct marketing firm Media Horizons Inc. to offer advertisers the opportunity to utilize the MarketSpace Web platform to select and purchase advertising placements with document owners. Media Horizons has a significant number of advertisers, across a broad spectrum of product and service categories, ready to buy advertising space.

"The ability to target communications in a relevant manner in today's environment goes a long way to strengthen the relationship between the marketer and consumer," said Alan Kraft, president, Media Horizons Inc. "We believe that advertising on transactional statements with specific offers and messages that are of interest to the recipient can help build more effective relationships than inserts due to targeting opportunities and the longevity of statements."

To use the MarketSpace Web platform, document owners and advertisers follow a quick, simple process.

• Document owners work with Pitney Bowes or their MarketSpace-enabled Service Bureau to upload documents to the Web platform. Next, the Web platform will characterize documents including whether they are black-and-white or color, the size and location of available white space through Production Intelligence software, as well as demographic information of individual document recipients through Spectrum PSYTE cluster information utilizing ZIP Codes. Additional characterization can be fed by data within the documents or data in external files.
• Advertisers can access the MarketSpace Web platform through Media Horizons and select audience targets. The platform will analyze the statement's distribution based on the advertiser's criteria and report how many estimated statements are available. The advertiser places an order based on this information.
• The MarketSpace Web platform sends a message to the document owner, who will review the order and either accept or reject the offer to place an advertisement. If the document owner accepts the offer, the TransPromo engine will manage the placement of these advertisements on statements for the specific recipients, downstream, as part of the overall production print operations.