Media company NZME, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, has joined forces with Fairfax Media, MediaWorks, and TVNZ to create a local advertising exchange service - Kiwi Premium Advertising Exchange (KPEX).
Effective from next month, KPEX will offer media agencies and clients an option for buying advertising online across New Zealand's leading media businesses.
Duncan Arthur, KPEX consulting chief executive, said KPEX would transform the New Zealand advertising market.
"It's an exciting initiative and the first time New Zealand media companies have pooled their inventory to provide the necessary scale for a private marketplace," Arthur said.
Described as programmatic exchanges, these kind of online biding platforms for advertising inventory are increasingly being adopted around the world.
"Publishers worldwide are wrestling with similar issues particularly in the face of very dominant organisations like Google and Facebook, so what we've seen in different markets worldwide is a coming together of traditional competitors," Arthur said.
The KPEX platform would effectively solve two issues for local advertisers, he said.
"It offers the efficiency of real-time bidding but with the security of knowing that your brand is going to pop up in very trusted premium sites with brand-safe premium content."