By Ben Tatta, Chief Commercial Officer, Operative
Media companies thought that the rise of digital media made their business complex, but that was nothing compared to the addition of streaming media, which combines the data and targeting of digital with the big screen appeal of linear. Today’s media landscape is built on a level of detail that is nearly impossible for teams to manage themselves. A single campaign could be made of thousands of line items with hundreds of different creative assets across tens of different properties. Creating proposals, uploading and managing campaigns and delivering accurate reporting has become a mind-bending exercise.
The good news is that artificial intelligence (AI) is set to transform media into a streamlined data-driven powerhouse that can become a profit centre for companies instead of a labour sink. What used to take days can now take minutes because of AI’s automation and ability to manage complex information. With advertiser spending on digital video expected to grow 16% to $63 billion in 2024 (IAB), now is the right time for media companies to implement AI across their major advertising functions including proposals, ad operations and reporting.
Unlocking the proposal
AI delivers a powerful punch starting with the very first interaction between advertiser and media company. A single advertiser request for proposal could require hundreds of manual hours of work combing through inventory availability reports, rate cards and audience data. With AI, that work is not only dramatically reduced; salespeople and their teams are freed up to become more strategic with their proposals.
A seller can simply speak to their computer and prompt AI to build a proposal in only a few minutes. That proposal will accurately reflect availability, pricing and audience reach, pulling from a media company’s entire technology stack across linear, digital and streaming. With all of the heavy lifting solved by AI, the seller has time to analyze the proposal and make some creative improvements. Analysts can review the total cost and create smarter discounts. The entire company gets faster, smarter, and as a result, more attractive to more advertisers.
Better ad operations
Ad ops is often a team saddled with a heavy burden of manual data entry and repetitive tasks. While a revenue management system streamlines the transition from proposal to campaign, AI essentially turbo-charges this process. Ad ops teams can use AI to double check insertion orders for accuracy, and to update changes quickly and easily.
As a campaign runs, the ad ops team is constantly looking for ways to improve campaign performance. Here, too, AI comes into play. AI can analyze delivery and uncover opportunities to deliver better campaign outcomes or identify any issues and flag them for ad ops to fix.
Investing in AI for ad operations might not directly impact a sale the way a proposal builder does, but it dramatically reduces the cost of running a campaign for the business, which improves margins and net revenue. What’s more, AI can reduce errors and help companies find efficiencies which can free up teams to work on more strategic projects such as developing new ad products.
Smarter reporting and insights
One of the most tedious parts of ad operations is campaign reporting. After a campaign starts, advertisers want frequent updates, which means ad ops teams are usually pulling manual reports across different delivery systems and aggregating them together. A revenue management platform can centralize and streamline this work, and with AI, the results can provide both time savings and strategic improvements.
AI can make it much easier to pull real-time reports, reconcile information and format reports automatically. With the analytics teams freed from pulling campaign reports, they can analyze trends and find insights about ad products and pricing, audiences and advertiser trends. All of these insights can be fed back into the sales process to create a positive cycle that creates a smarter and more effective media advertising operation.
