Digitization has been transforming the media industry since Bill Gates boldly published “Content is King” some twenty years ago, making what turned into a correct prediction that content is where money will be made on the Internet. As digital trends from streaming, social and mobile transformed the industry, the market became inundated with gigabytes of content while satiating the demands of consumers who expect access to content from anywhere at any time.
The stakes have been high for media companies to compete. They need to keep up with creating high-user experiences, customized content, more personalized ads, and better recommendations, and it’s through technology that they have been discovering new ways of generating content, experimenting with correct contexts, and imagining innovative distribution.
As the media industry has recognized that in order to survive, the boundary they may have once had in place with technology on the front line has had to come down, so has this need been in place on their back end, particularly with ad sales. Knowing the technology advancements that will drive the efficiency of your ad sales is as important as catering to digital experience. Implementing the ones that make sense for your business will make or break your ability to monetize in a complicated market and scale as the media industry further evolves.
It’s never been a better time to optimize your ad sales operations. A recent IDG digital transformation report noted that while more than 44% of organizations have begun implementing a digital-first approach to all areas of business including business strategy, operations, and customer engagement, only 7% of companies are fully implementing their digital-first approach. Based on this, if you haven’t done much to digitally transform your operations then you’re not as far behind as may think; nonetheless, you need to act swiftly.
The first to step digitally transform ad sales operations is to analyze the extent to which your organization can embrace change and adopt the technology that will drive this change. Technology after all will help hold up your ability to follow through on change. While thinking through necessary changes, consider that small steps will help you survive and to be part of the future of advertising – to thrive, it’s important to make a full transformation.
We’ve worked with clients from all ends of media to help them make full digital transformations. One client, a leading broadcaster, came to us with challenges spanning across systems, processes, and sales. They had disparate data, poor planning, siloed data storage, divided business units, disjointed processes, technical legacy. The result: poor customer experience and missed revenue operations. They had to do something to turn this around.
What does a full transformation look like? Read what our leading broadcaster customer did in the next part of this two-part series.
