Traffic and Revenue series: "What the users say"

In today's Traffic and Revenue Management System Intel Brief, we've gathered some quotes from radio and television traffic personnel responding to selected Traffic Directors' Guild of America (TDGA) questions. This is a bit of a "wish list," although they were welcome to get up on their soapboxes as well! We've asked vendors in the space to respond, where relevant to their product offering.

The participants:
Pete D'Acosta, Marketron's CEO
Mary Blair, Division Manager, Business Systems, VCI Solutions
Michael Ambrose, Product Manager, WideOrbit's WO Traffic
Dave Scott, RadioTraffic.com CEO

RADIO:
 
 
Brad Wilcox, Market Traffic Manager, CBS Radio - Charlotte, NC:  The optimum system needs to be accessible from anywhere and at any time. (A web-based system, with controls in place to provide access dependent upon the user’s needs or limitations.) This system should eliminate as much redundancy in data entry as possible.  Sales orders should be done once by the sales person and immediately flow through an integrated approval process, which would eliminate paper orders and hand written approval signatures, documented and stored electronically for future access. Although you obviously need separate areas for account information, Continuity instructions, reporting, commercial log editing. You shouldn’t have to go in and out of all these areas to get around in a system.  There should be some integration with other areas from within the system.  For Traffic Manager in this system, their biggest function would be shifted to true, inventory management.  They will need the ability to easily view and manipulate schedules well into the future.  Going back to the notion of integrating with an automated commercial/music system, they (along with the Continuity and Production staff) would have the ability to make immediate changes to commercials, if necessary.  This should be as simple to do as correcting a spelling error. 
 
D’ Acosta: Marketron Traffic deployed on the Marketron Hosted Server Platform (HSP) is accessible any place or time that you can access the Internet.  User security profiles control the applications and data that you can see and manipulate.  Marketron Traffic is organized by user areas eliminating redundancy and the need to log in and out of the system multiple times to accomplish your work.  For sales, orders are entered by AEs, electronically approved, contracted and scheduled to station logs. Additionally, Marketron is Sarbanes Oxley certified, maintaining audit trails and history for orders, revisions and approvals. 

Traffic Managers have many tools that can be customized to assist them in maximizing station revenue, Marketron's Boardfile allows Traffic Managers to see target revenue goals, monitor progress toward these goals, and decide easy and strategic spot moves all on one screen (see below).  Screen views can be easily modified to show the most important contract data according to your individual goals.  View spots by rate, by competitive code, priority or many other order fields.  Modify programs, add or remove avails, modify contracts, assign copy, send bumped spot and makegood notifications all from this one central screen. 

Scott: RadioTraffic.com allows complete access over the Internet via computer or PDA at all times. Password restrictions and other sophisticated security is in place.

RadioTraffic.com allows order entry and approvals as desired, including by sales person or traffic department.  Order approvals can be done by PDA or text message.   

RadioTraffic.com has one central place for all these functions. For the Traffic Manager in this system, their biggest function would be shifted to true, inventory management.  They will need the ability to easily view and manipulate schedules well into the future. 

RadioTraffic.com not only simplifies the tasks of the traffic manager, it makes much of inventory management automatic.  Commercials are placed using station defined criteria.  The primary placement is by highest rate but preference can also be given to seasonal situations where future make-goods won't be possible, certain accounts due to annual expenditures in spite of lower rate per spot or other factors such as history with the account. 

Further, RadioTraffic.com "learns" from the editing that is done.  The software observes when manual edits are made to logs and tweaks the priorities for future logs based changes made to finished logs.

As the founder and former owner of Scott Studios' studio automation, RadioTraffic.com is very familiar with the processes involved in integrating with automated studio equipment, including full ability to easily make immediate changes to commercials as desired.
 
(More from Wilcox): Electronic invoicing needs a makeover.  I think this ability grew faster than we could come up with a rational way to process it.  There seems to be an infinite number of services out there (some free…some not) for stations and their clients to subscribe to.  Couple that with an equally infinite way these services require the data to be processed and notated, it’s no wonder it can be a mess.  Somehow, there needs to be a centralized clearing house for the invoices that come from the stations – that gets sent out to the service of choice for the client/agency (or directly to the clients/agencies themselves).  E-mailing invoices would be the simplest, but I understand the desire for the invoice information to integrate into an agency’s own system. Thus reducing redundant entry on their end as well.  Perhaps it is a format issue (what format the invoices and information needs to be delivered in… as in Excel, etc) that needs to be addressed and made uniform.  
 
D’ Acosta: We agree that the e-commerce can be confusing. To help with this, we are launching the Marketron Exchange.  This service will deliver electronic orders and invoices to and from more than 6,500 Marketron Traffic, Visual Traffic and DeltaFlex stations.  The Marketron Exchange delivers in accordance with each agency’s directive (format and method) for delivering electronic invoices.   

Scott: EI was built to specifications of the AAAA and big ad agencies.  Perhaps the radio industry got pushed around by TV or the big agencies but after we traffic vendors and radio stations agree with the need for improvements, we don't feel like we're driving this.

(More from Wilcox): Reports.  To produce accurate reports, information must be collected from a uniform and standardized database.  Flexibility is wonderful.  However, there must be controls in place to ensure information is properly categorized.  I like the concept of having main Revenue/Inventory categories (i.e.:  Local, National, NTR, Trade…for example…and are untouchable on the local level) and having all other sub categories roll up to the main.  Reports should then be able to produce information based upon any of these categories.  In this way, market or corporate reports could have information based upon the more “main” categories – yet would allow for unique nomenclature of sub categories at the local level.  Inventory reports should be based one way…. how the commercial logs actually are (avails).  I believe more in a time-based system, as it is a much more accurate and discernable depiction of the inventory.  Although the ability to determine specific spot length activity is helpful, neither commercial logs (as well as commercial breaks) nor reports should be set up to separate them (unless a report break down is desired).  In other words, a 5-minute commercial break should be able to be populated by any combination of spot lengths and not mandated to a specific number of (example) 30’s and 60’s.  Warnings should appear to the user only when the designated “time” allotment for a particular break is reached. 

They should have the ability to see where any and all commercials are for a particular advertiser (“and/or” contract) are on the log – in one, convenient pop up window.  (Example – Have to keep a client an hour apart from each of their commercials?  Click a button to see where they are in an instant.  Want to see where the spots from all of a client’s contracts are?  Click another button).  Open inventory should also be readily viewable with the touch of a button or click of the mouse.  No need for scrolling through an entire log for either circumstance.
  
D’Acosta: Marketron Traffic is designed with security settings that allow stations to standardize the information that is used by their stations.  In Brad’s example, station management can decide how each station or group of stations will operate in our Setup Editor module. Decisions about how revenue is categorized and reported; what types of inventory are available to for stations to sell; and whether they report and sell inventory by unit or time are examples of protected setup items. 

Scott: RadioTraffic.com facilitates virtually any desired report.  If we're not generating what you want already, we do give customers a reasonable number of custom reports at no cost and others at nominal cost.  Further, we export virtually all data to Excel and various charts/graphs software so you can create your own reports. RadioTraffic.com is a time-based system, working as you suggest. 

RadioTraffic.com has these sorts of functions, including easy location of open avails and bonus spots or trades used merely for network format fill.

TELEVISION:
 
 
Kim Van Brunt, Traffic Manager, WFTS-TV, Tampa, FL: I think it would be great if we could have a traffic system that would encompass the Internet realm of advertising so we had 1 system to track everything and not have to look in 8 different places. One of our biggest challenges right now is managing our Internet inventory since our traffic department (and same for all Scripps stations) now has to manage the process.  The Internet advertising realm is an area we should all be concerned with (now, and in the future.)

Blair: VCI Solutions’ Orion® currently allows the flexibility of entering New Media/Interactive revenue onto its traditional airtime contracts for the purposes of producing a single order and invoice.  While there is no industry standard for tracking this type of inventory or revenue stream, VCI Solutions is continually working towards improving its existing capabilities to include but not limited to interfacing with Interactive Ad Servers and adhering to any standards forthcoming.

Scott: RadioTraffic.com does not deal with TV stations but our radio stations indeed can manage Internet inventory through our software.

Jim Parfitt, Traffic Manager, WIWB-TV, Green Bay WI: How about a way for the traffic software to interface with Quick books? (By the way, some of the more basic software systems do allow downloads of selected fields into Quicken, Quick Books, etc.)
 
Blair: VCI Solutions Orion® has the ability to produce custom exports and downloads for various purposes, including interfacing with General Ledger packages.  Due to the possible variations for any download, customizing them for each client provides a better solution in assuring true compatibility with a third party system.

Ambrose: In WO Traffic, users can export data to text, html, xls, or xml formats for upload to external systems with a simple right-click transaction. 

Scott: RadioTraffic.com does not deal with TV stations but our radio stations indeed can seamlessly export into Quicken, Quick Books, Microsoft Accounting, etc.