The Importance Of Deciphering Digital Jargon

If you have any doubts about the importance of lifelong learning, you won’t need to look any further than what your ad sales teams must know to compete in the world of real-time, integrated media-buying. To paraphrase a Steve Martin movie quote, “Boy, those online media buyers have a different word for everything.”

But, as the saying goes, knowledge is power. And it’s is becoming increasing important for us to be in the know about selling digital media. Here are just a couple of reasons:   

• A recent Nielsen IAG study shows that TV advertising combined with digital/mobile advertising creates stronger brand recognition and message recall than can be achieved with just one medium. Consumers are two times as likely to be aware of a brand and/or recall a brand message when TV and digital advertising are combined.
• There has also been a jump in consumers using devices simultaneously. An Ericsson Consumerlab 2013 study found that 75% of people use mobile devices to multi-task while watching TV. Cross-platform campaigns allow advertisers to extend their reach and add frequency to their ad buys. It is cost-effective and a very efficient way to promote a brand to both general and precision-targeted consumer groups.

These trends, along with the sheer number of new words associated with digital advertising, caused us to ask Michael Scott, SVP of strategic partnerships at Cox Media Group’s Cox Digital Solutions and Cox Cross Media subsidiaries, to provide a quick tutorial on “digital jargon.” With Scott’s background in forging CoxReps’ solutions for tapping into the growing demand for “360” or cross-platform ad sales, we felt he was the perfect person to demystify terms such as “third party ad server” that have become as commonplace in today’s conversations with media buyers as traditional terms like spot, PI and flight. His explanations can be found in an article entitled “Deciphering the Digital Jargon” which appears in the March-April 2014 issue of The Financial Manager (TFM), MFM’s member magazine.

As we quickly found out, mastering the jargon isn’t just about learning the different words used in online media; it also requires understanding the many things that are different when selling digital ads. This is particularly true when we consider that our ability to compete effectively for cross-media buys will depend upon how well we can integrate the systems and processes we use for supporting “traditional” media buys with the programmatic, real-time, Internet-based platforms that will be supporting the same ad campaigns.

Take, for example, the investments that CoxReps has put into its ad sales organization to compete for digital media advertising revenues. While both of the units where Scott is involved connect advertisers with their target audience through multichannel solutions, Cox Digital Solutions (CDS) also has a dedicated publisher team responsible for building and maintaining CDS Connect, a real-time bidding platform, and a product called Reach Extension for publishers. Meanwhile, its Cox Cross Media arm provides multiplatform selling opportunities across CoxReps’ locally represented TV stations as well as digital and mobile solutions.

These digital sales organizations are currently focused on addressing three types of cross-media selling opportunities: 

1. National Supplementation: This is designed to serve advertisers that are running a national campaign using broadcast TV and digital media but are underperforming in certain markets across the country. CDS and CXM can supplement their national buy with “heavy-ups” in particular local markets across Cox-owned or partner properties, which include TV and radio stations, cable channels carried on Cox Cable systems and digital opportunities.
2. Market Ownership: In this scenario, CoxReps provides an advertiser with cross-platform market saturation that allows the advertiser to essentially “own” a market or series of markets. The service is offered across all 210 U.S. markets and typically involves selling broadcast spot or local cable ads in addition to a digital campaign.
3. Geo-Fencing/Targeting: This solution allows an advertiser to reach a highly qualified consumer within a very small geographic area or market at a time when that consumer is primed to receive an advertiser’s message. Mobile, standard digital media and even video can be geo-targeted and is typically over 95% accurate, according to Scott’s experience.

Of course, Cox Media Group’s approach is just one example of the ways your company can take advantage of the opportunity to, as Borrell Associates’ Gordon Borrell describes it, “turn digital dimes into conventional dollars.”

How important is investing in a digital strategy? Consider how quickly those digital dimes can turn into real dollars in your markets. eMarketer predicts digital video will represent $12.2 billion in ad spending by 2018. That amount will account for roughly 16% of the $78.62 billion in ad spending on TV that year.

So much of this growth in digital advertising will be video-based that a panel of marketers convened by Nielsen and Simulmedia concluded that television has the best opportunity to take the leadership role in meeting this growing demand for integrated, cross-media ad spends.

Trust is a big reason television has the best opportunity to take on the leading role, according to Nielsen. While digital media is still sorting out accountability issues with respect to audience measurement, television is a medium that can extend the higher level of trust that advertisers place in its metrics to the digital media platforms that will be incorporated into these cross-platform media buys. And as TVB has reported, viewers place a higher level of trust in local television programming such as news than any other medium available.

With so much riding on the future of digital ad sales — from both a revenue and cost standpoint, it will be one of the major discussion topics at Media Finance Focus 2014, the 54^th annual MFM-BCCA conference, which will be held in Miami May 19-21.

Our agenda includes a keynote address by Gordon Borrell in which he will outline and evaluate the digital ad sales strategies being implemented by our member companies.

We’ll also have a number of sessions addressing the latest developments in ad measurement and ad delivery technology as well as interactive sessions where our TV, newspaper and radio members will be sharing their insights on what’s working in their markets. These include presentations on consumer trends that are driving the future of media and on the role of big data in helping stations to improve their digital efforts to engage users and advertisers.

In another session, IAB’s Patrick Dolan will cover recent trends in digital media and advertising and how they affect financial operations.

We will also be receiving updates on ad measurement from experts at Nielsen and Rentrak and discussing the new forms of media measurement. A session entitled “Solving the Conundrum of Unified Cross-media Traditional TV-to-OTT Advertising” will dive into the intricacies of selling, delivering, tracking, and billing for ad campaigns that include both linear and non-linear distribution. There will also be several sessions concerning social media revenues opportunities, including one that addresses “Generating Mobile Ad Revenues from Second Screen Experiences.”  

More information about Media Finance Focus 2104 may be found on our website. As you can see from our agenda, it will be a great way to discover how you can translate digital jargon into a prosperous digital media enterprise at you station or company. We look forward to seeing you in Miami next month.

Mary M. Collins is president and CEO of the Media Financial Management Association and its BCCA subsidiary. She can be reached at [email protected]. Her column appears in TVNewsCheck every other week. You can read her earlier columns here.