The free-to-join service, a joint venture between company directors Catryn Brogan and Chris Branch and the Lateral Group, will be available 24 hours a day and aims to revolutionise the insert marketplace.

Brogan and Branch want the site to be a one-stop shop for advertisers who will be able to buy both inserts and print.

Three services are available via the trading platform, which launched on Monday, including: Esertprint, a print management site which will provide advertisers and agencies with the opportunity to buy their print at competitive prices; Esertbuy, an auction site which allows agencies to invite media owners to bid for inserts in a secure online environment; and Esertsell, where media owners can invite agencies to bid for their insert inventory.

Brogan said: "We hope that Esertprint will encourage advertisers to test inserts as a new medium. They can buy the media and the print on exactly the same site. Lateral Group has a roster of agreed suppliers that feed into their system and advertisers can get competitive quotes from these suppliers."

Advertisers can enter their print specifications onto the Esertprint system for instant quotes, although more complicated requirements will be passed onto the account handling team and responded to within 24 hours.

Brogan said that the site has around 70 publications, including national newspapers, consumer and business magazines, signed up for trading so far but would not disclose any names, saying that they had been promised confidentiality as part of the service.