The radio industry celebrates 18 years of J-ET

J-ET, the radio industry’s trading system, turns 18 this year and Mediatel are holding a party at the Haymarket Hotel on Thursday 28 September to celebrate.

The J-ET system, managed by Radiocentre and IPA and run by Mediatel, handles over 90% of all national radio advertising. It was the first automated industry trading system, long before programmatic entered everyone’s vocabulary. J-ET was developed originally to deliver increased single-source Post-Campaign Accountability, to make radio easier to buy and sell and to increase share of spend. It has also removed accounts queries from radio and provides detailed and immediately usable reconciliation data now for campaigns where none previously existed.

Lynne Robinson, Research Director of the IPA and one of the key people involved in the launch, commented: “J-ET is held up as the exemplar in its field. It runs quietly, efficiently and very cost effectively in the background. That’s a testament to the JICRIT and Mediatel teams.”

J-ET has brought genuine ROI to the radio industry and it continues to be supported by Mediatel’s client service team. Since its launch, close to £5 billion of radio revenue has been traded through J-ET and it remains the only jointly owned industry trading system in the UK.

Someone else who remembers the J-ET launch is Nick Hewat, now Commercial Director of Guardian News & Media. He was at Capital Radio then and recalls: “I remember Derek Morris, who was then Chairman (of IPA Radio Working Party) saying, ‘you’ve got something other media would kill for.’ And at the time I don’t think any of us who were involved really understood what that comment meant but I think 18 years on, we do now.”

Derek Jones, CEO of Mediatel says: “It is with great pleasure and pride that we are gathering to mark J-ET’s 18th birthday on Thursday. It has a regular user base of around 600 buyers and sellers and its client list includes all the major radio groups in London, Manchester and Scotland, plus the leading media agencies in each region. Last year, Mediatel partnered with IMD to launch our new audio distribution service, Audiotrack, which means we now provide a full end-to-end service for radio advertising.”