Kuráž Media aims to empower small and medium publishers

The newly established media representation agency Kuráž Media [Courage Media] aims to strengthen the position of medium and small publishers in the advertising market. Its majority owner is the Association of Online Publishers (AOV), but the platform is also open to media that are not members of this group. The minority shareholder is the Independent Media Club.

The agency currently represents a dozen publishers, including Deník N, Drbna, Echo 24, Forum 24, Hlídací Pes, NextPage Media, Voxpot, i60.cz, Reportér, and Internet Info. The publishers will purposefully collaborate on advertising tenders where it makes sense for them. Most of them continue with their partners in the field of programmatic advertising sales.

"We perceive an increased demand from enlightened agencies or national clients who would like to allocate more money to smaller publishers. This willingness often encountered the need to comply with performance parameters. Thanks to the strong cluster of publishers in Kuráž Media, we are meeting this willingness," says Libor Matoušek, Chairman of the Association of Online Publishers.

Kuráž Media is based on the transparent distribution of money from advertising campaigns. It is predefined how much of the money obtained from the advertiser will end up in the accounts of the media involved in the given campaign.

"We will apply transparency to both media and advertisers. We feel the need to help the segment of publishers who play a significant social role and stand outside large publishing houses owned by strong capital groups. We believe that the management of many companies is motivated to support these media with advertising expenditures, provided the corresponding advertising performance. These media are key to maintaining opinion plurality in the Czech Republic," says Tomáš Řehák, a managing director of Kuráž Media, who has been in the field of online advertising for over two decades.

"Small and medium-sized publishers often don't have a chance to succeed in state or private tenders for online advertising. That's why we have created a joint umbrella organisation that will combine advertising efforts," noted Libor Matoušek, speaking for the Lupa.cz server.

Kuráž Media will be able to offer the combined traffic of its member servers to the market. The joint offer should be more attractive to advertisers, which should increase the chances of securing their advertising money.

"For example, we are talking to the Office of the Government to formulate their advertising tenders in such a way that smaller players can also reach them, not just the three largest (Czech News Center, Mafra, Vltava Labe Media)," Matoušek explains.

Kuráž Media will deduct a fixed fee of 23% from the money it receives. "We promise that 77% of the funds will go to the represented media. That's very ambitious. The success of the project depends on the trust of both advertisers and media that the money from each order will end up transparently in the media's accounts," promises Tomáš Řehák.

The distribution of money to individual publishers will not depend solely on their size. "We want to be a bit innovative and support even the smallest ones, so a minority of the campaign volume will be distributed equally among the participating publishers, and the majority will be distributed according to the promised and delivered media performance. This will result in a certain bonus for the smaller ones. I take my hat off to all the larger publishers we represent, none of whom had the slightest problem with this principle. We will enable the smaller ones to participate in a meaningful way," adds Řehák.