“I’m not sure [OTT] will be a bigger thing in five years than it is today," the broadcast group CEO says. He adds that he's focused on providing marketing services in all forms to local business. "At our base, we are a local service business,” he said. “Local businesses are crying out for help here” and Nexstar wants “a larger share of their wallet than just their ad dollars.” Read full coverage of the Borrell Local Online Ad Conference here.
BORRELL LOCAL ONLINE AD CONFERENCE
Nexstar’s Perry Sook Is Cool To OTT
Like most other legacy media executives, Nexstar Broadcasting Group CEO Perry Sook understands that it’s important to embrace digital media, but not necessarily all digital media.
“I’m not sure that OTT is a thing, per se,” he said, questioning the a la carte marketing approach. “I’m not sure it will be a bigger thing in five years than it is today.”
He made the comments yesterday in New York at Borrell Associates’ Local Online Advertising Conference where he accepted Borrell’s 2016 Award of Merit for innovation in local media.
Sook said he was focused on providing marketing services in all forms to local business. “At our base, we are a local service business,” he said. “Local businesses are crying out for help here” and Nexstar wants “a larger share of their wallet than just their ad dollars.”
Nexstar’s revenue carves up into five streams — on-air ads, digital/mobile, retransmission fees, station management fees and spectrum — and Sook said that in 2015, only 45% of that revenue came from spot ads (excluding political).
Going forward, he said, local sales teams need to be focused on digital and local. He noted that 70% of small businesses say their No. 1 concern is incursions from online retailers, something Nexstar wants to arm them against with more holistic marketing efforts.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
At the same time, Nexstar has built up its own in-house tech stack of content management and ad serving.
Lakana, its SaaS-based CMS company, counts Scripps, Cox and Tegna among its clients, and it has made its own recent acquisition in Kixer, a machine learning, mobile monetization ad tech platform. On the programmatic side, Nexstar added Yashi, a video platform, last year.
Even though Nexstar will count 171 TV stations in its portfolio when it closes on its merger with Media General, those tech companies, paired with aggressive local digital sales and marketing efforts, are where it sees its most sustainable future.
“We think digital will be the growth engine,” Sook said.
Read full coverage of the Borrell Local Online Ad Conference here.
Comments (2)
Brian Bussey says:
March 2, 2016 at 9:45 am
he wont last long
Darrell Bengson says:
March 2, 2016 at 10:52 am
This whole venture is far above his head…. in my humble opinion Nexstar has bitten of more than they can handle. I would not be surprised if they will go belly up in a few years especially knowing the poisonous corporate climate within that place.