MAXIMIZING AD REVENUE FOR SALES EXECUTIVES

The business and technical case for real-time ad placement automation

SITUATION

It’s tough to sell advertising when you don’t have the assets at your fingertips. The advertising sales force at a leading cable television provider lacked both the means to discern real-time air time availability and the support to automate order entry and scheduling, resulting not only in lower sales volumes and lower yields but also in customer complaints about difficulties in purchasing advertising time.  

THE SYNAPTIC SHIFT

The Capto team helped the cable provider develop a business and technical case for a new system that would provide automated inventory, order management, and spot buying and scheduling functionality.

The system integrated the functions of the network’s advertising sales, programming, and traffic departments. We identified two vendors and assisted the network in partnering with them: One specialized in rapid application development and the other in advertising, traffic, and inventory management solutions. This ensured that the required industry expertise was involved and that the project could be completed on time.

RESULTS

A flexible, nearly real-time ad placement capability that maximized revenue for highest-value spot placement—for example, if a sporting event went into overtime, ads could be sold in near real-time at a much higher value.