USE YOUR PRODUCT TO FUND SOME MORE MEDIA THIS CHRISTMAS CAMPAIGN Christmas can be an expensive time to advertise especially when marketing budgets are under pressure and you need to gain as much exposure as possible. Astus can enable you to use your product (be it new or unsold inventory) or services to pay for Christmas marketing activity - even at this late stage. Media barter will work with you or your media buying agency to get you the media you want at the most competitive price possible AND you pay using cash and product!

What's the idea: An advertiser is looking to extend its marketing activity for the Christmas advertising campaign for its products but has a limited cash budget.

Using media barter, the advertiser is able to use products (whether new, superseded or surplus) to part-fund its Christmas advertising campaign. Media barter is a smart business process that can allow media owners and brand advertisers to trade, without having to pay 100% in cash for what they want. It enables advertisers to create budgets that didn't previously exist, or extend budgets that do not stretch far enough by allowing them to use their goods and services - including unsold stock - to part pay for their media.

After the campaign is delivered, Astus trades the products via pre-agreed distribution routes potentially opening up new channels and never cannibalizing existing routes. The deal will result in less cash being required for the brand's Christmas advertising campaign as last product is used to part pay for this year's media (which has a "cost" value attached to it which is under the "cash" value of the media). The advertiser then has final say over how the product is distributed (eg, must be new channels).

Last year over 100 advertisers teamed up with Astus to benefit from media barter. We worked with their media agencies on their media plan across all media which allowed the brands to part pay for the cost using unsold stock from the year before - from bottles of beer, to cameras, to chocolate puddings. On all the media barter deals Astus does, the discount level and quality of the media remains the same as if it were paid for 100% in cash and the media agency is still paid full commission on the gross value of the campaign.