Even though most of Indian newspapers have gone online, booking a classified in a newspaper is still an off-line process. Something that we would easily term as a big pain and a generation behind.
There surely has been a need to bring in ‘structure of the internet’ into print media industry, and that’s exactly where ReleaseMyAd – an online venue to book print classified has chipped in.
ReleaseMyAd enables one to book newspaper classified ads – the company has tied up with national newspapers (ToI, HT, Hindu, Telegraph) as well as regional brands like Sikkim Express, Rajasthan Patrika etc.
Creating an ad is a multi step process – you need to select the ad format (text vs. banner), Newspaper (and edition) and the relevant category, and plan the schedule and pricing of the ads too.
The user interface of ReleaseMyAd is quite smooth, yet some improvements would be imperative to simplify the process of ‘booking-an-ad’ over the current industry model of just making a phone call to an ad agency.
ReleaseMyAd is accredited by the Indian Newspaper Society (I.N.S.), the primary governing body for all media publications and the company is directly competing with Times’ Ads2Book service.
Overall, we believe that ReleaseMyAd has neatly addressed a severe pain-point and would be useful to many. Do give it a spin.
Is it still an offline process? I have booking newspaper classifieds online for last 2-3 years. ToI, HT…they all have it…and its very easy to do…Been doing it through, as you have yourself mentioned – Ads2Book
It’s also interesting to note that this has tied up with ToI and still competes directly with Times Groups’ Ad2books
It’s also interesting to note that this has tied up with ToI and still competes directly with Times Groups’ Ad2books – thanks to bureaucracy..diff BUs
Check out http://www.reachwide.com/ one more entrant doing exactly as this.
Very interesting!!
market is really hot…its good for TOI to have a competing agency against a BU as long as revenues get a boost.
Thanks for the coverage & kind words – Arvind & Ashish. One clarification, releaseMyAd also offers booking of Classified Display Advertisements (Not banners), which can be designed on the fly- with custom fonts, logos & pictures. These are premium priced and cater more towards SME advertisers whose volume’s are still small to.
@ Rohit, yes you’d be surprised of the near 50 Newspapers that we have partnered with. Less than 8 would be operating their own “online booking” service efficiently. Also,In most cases we do more business then these individual sites themselves given our aggregator model.
We envision releaseMyAd to simplify Newspaper Classified Booking, in a country where Print is still a dominant medium with its wide reach and language diversity (and we believe will continue to be so, for the near future).
Btw, we did use pluggd.in job boards – a year back pretty effectively
Sharad Lunia
Business Head, Classifieds
releaseMyAd
Ads2Book also covers 45-50 publications I think. Anyways, all the best
Things can always be made better.
Yes, competition creates greater value. Thanks for your wishes!
I’d recommend you to check if Hindu, Telegraph, ABP, Dainik Jagran , Amar Ujala, Malayala Manorama, Deccan Chronicle — all leading newspapers in their respective regions- are part of that list from our competitor/partner
1 difference i didnt stress on earlier – is that we are publication neutral – and not owned by a particular publication group. This might explain certain things.
I actually conversed with your live-chat guy using my pseudonym yesterday to ascertain the level of engagement of your team in your business. It was good. Way to go, guys