OpenAd.net expands into Netherlands

The company challenges the idea that ad agencies have a monopoly on supplying business-changing ideas. It works by offering marketers original creative ideas from a community of around 7600 creatives in 116 countries, either for sale on a gallery or posted in response to online client briefs. OpenAd.net has hosted pitches for clients such as MTV, Lastminute.com and Emap, with winning creative ideas coming from as far a field as the UK, India and the UAE.

Says Serge Fenenko, MD of Novocortex, who will be heading the OpenAd business, ‘‘I am convinced that international creative teams of www.OpenAd.net can produce very original and unexpected ideas for advertisers. OpenAd’s clients and creatives come from all parts of the world so any client from any country can buy ideas from creatives from more than a hundred countries worldwide.”

More than doubled

The number of Dutch creatives submitting ideas to OpenAd’s online pitches has more than doubled over the past six months, and Dutch advertisers are already holding pitches on OpenAd.net.

The company will be represented in the Netherlands by Novocortex, which specialises in new media and interactive marketing. Its job is to recruit new creatives and clients as well as launching a local marketing and sales campaign.

OpenAd’s decision to work with Novocortex was based on its experience with outsourcing marketing and advertising projects for Dutch clients abroad, as well as providing advisory services and campaign management.

Broker, not agency

OpenAd is a broker rather than an ad agency and makes its profits by taking a straight 22.5% fee on deals brokered. Its parent company OpenAd AG CH is based in Switzerland and is majority-owned by Slovenian holding company Istrabenz (www.istrabenz.si).

Nina Dinjaski, business development manager at OpenAd.net, told Bizcommunity.com, “We currently have 30 creatives from SA working through OpenAd.net, representing 0.4% of our entire creative community of 7600 people. We would certainly like to see more South African creatives to sell their ideas through our online client held pitches and show their creative talent to the world's biggest advertisers, and we believe that many more will start joining once the word spreads and once more of their colleagues start making money this way.

“We also welcome South African businesses to take this opportunity to have hundreds of great creative solutions delivered to them via an easy online procedure. All they need to come up with to hold an online global pitch, really, is a creative brief. Yearly corporate memberships start at no more than US$3000."

Over 1200 of OpenAd creatives are from the UK, its 'home' market, with roughly 1400 from Latin America, 700 from India, over 500 from Slovenia and 400 from the US.