Media Barter Trading and Barter Company, let’s talk!

New technologies and internet networks have fundamentally changed the way companies advertise their products and target consumers, thanks to so-called social media and web ads, which are replacing traditional newspaper and billboard advertisements.

What hasn’t changed so far is the number of companies willing to invest in advertising space to make themselves known to the public, even as new trends are looming on the horizon.

If we take the British market as an example, in 2015 alone British companies spent a substantial sum of £25 billion pounds on advertising (equal to about € 31 billion), a sum that clearly demonstrates how much the advertising sector affects the budget of companies producing goods and services. For these investments to be managed wisely from a financial point of view, an ancient method of payment is increasingly used, barter, which has entered the common modern terminology with various English expressions: media bartering, corporate barter, advertising barter or barter trading.

What does “media barter” mean?

By means of the media barter system, which in Italian we can translate as “exchange of goods for advertising“, a company undertakes to provide goods or services, generally corresponding to what they themselves produce, in exchange for advertising services offered by a barter company, a company specialising in the collection of goods for the provision of a service. The English term “barter“, if understood as a verb or noun, refers precisely to the exchange that is at the centre of this corporate transaction, which basically rests on the concept of exchange between goods and services.

When a brand intends to advertise its goods or services, one of the most significant expense items consists precisely in the purchase of advertising space on the media, such as television, press, radio and now also on digital platforms. The barter trading mechanism allows you to lower these costs, by paying a part, or the entire advertising costs, with products and therefore significantly amortising marketing costs. A barter company takes care of providing all advertising services to the company, obviously guaranteeing a professional approach, even if not remunerated in the traditional way: the activities provided may include the classic ones of defining and implementing an advertising campaign, such as the identification of sensitive points, research on where and how to advertise products and identification of channels on which to convey commercial messages to obtain the most effective result. As mentioned, the company that uses these advertising planning services offers products in exchange, which will be analysed and evaluated by the barter company. This is an important phase in the relationship between the two realities, as the accepted goods and services can then be distributed to the professionals who created the advertising campaigns.

Thus, the Adv Stores are born, exclusive shops accessible only to those who work in barter trading: here you can find items at extremely advantageous prices, made available by the advertising merchandise exchange companies following the agreement with the companies that benefited from the advertising services. A peculiarity of these businesses is given by their confidentiality, which only allows registered customers to enter to make purchases.

What are the benefits of media bartering?

For companies that turn to media barter companies, the advantages are numerous. In fact, using stock to meet payments lets you:

• avoid recourse to liquidity for the use of advertising services;
• in the event that the overproduction allows cheaper supplies of raw materials, it guarantees the possibility of disposing the surplus without going under cost;
• it reduces the need for credit lines, highlighting a lower debt on the balance sheet
• Adv Stores can be an excellent test for the launch of new products

The prospects for future growth of media bartering seem promising, considering that it is a phenomenon closely associated with the information technology, communication and media sectors, especially digital ones, all sectors in rapid and continuous evolution. Paradoxically, at the basis of this trend there is a principle that is thousands of years old, which for its simplicity and immediacy has characterised companies from any era: bartering with the media barter survives even in the digital age.