The Times of India is auctioning print advertising via an online bid platform, auctioning premium print ads during the Diwali Season, via bid.indiatimes.com. For this, the company has created new premium advertising spots in the newspaper, over and above the regular inventory, to meet demand during the advertising season, for the newspapers the group will publish between the 20th and 25th of October. The papers in which ads are being auctioned include the Times of India (all editions), Bombay Times, Delhi Times, and the Mirror newspapers (like Bangalore Mirror and Mumbai Mirror). Speaking with MediaNama, a Times of India spokesperson said that the idea behind the auction was set up because of significant demand for Diwali, and with around 80% of normal ad spots already sold, they "But we wanted to see if we can do create new spots, and fulfil new demand. We decided to make new ad spots which normally advertisers can't get, and put them up for sale in a transparent ad auction." The new ad spots include a Skybar ad just under the masthead, Ear ads next to the mastheads, and a Spine ad, which goes across the spine of the first and the last page, which is like a binding for the newspaper. Control is being exercised on who can bid, reports Exchange4media, since agencies have been given usernames and passwords. Will it work beyond Diwali? Our take is that it's worth a shot. While there are sites like Ads2Book, they are primarily for booking classified…
