Media companies typically send out dozens of proposals each week and have less than 48 hours to respond to RFPs, which creates an enormous burden on media sales teams who need to obtain pricing approvals, conduct inventory checks and complete multiple reviews as part of a highly manual process. For media companies with local and national teams, coordinating multi-market proposals adds even more complexity to the process. 

It would seem that the fog of the pandemic is finally letting more and more rays of normalcy through. However, it would be somewhat naive to think that everything will go exactly back to the way it was, or perhaps more concerning, that this may not be the last large-scale unforeseen circumstance that comes our way. There is encouraging news however, which is that publishers implemented strategies that lead to 67 percent rebounding revenue by the fall, and 94 percent by the end of 2020. We scoured our own platform data and combined it with survey responses to bring you four strategies that led not only to publishers becoming nearly pandemic-proof, but can also serve as a north star for future planning.

Key Findings

1.“Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years”

After years of challenges and headwinds, digital media companies came roaring back with a median growth rate of 49% in 2021. The pandemic accelerated consumer trends to digital media consumption which advertisers rewarded with a spike of ad dollars. The digital ad market is expected to grow by 13-17% in 2022 (by Magna), so it will be interesting to see if and how media companies will continue to capture the opportunity.

Publishers are under increasing pressure to grow profitably and increase enterprise value for their stakeholders. As a result, they’re increasingly focused on Net Advertising Revenue Retention (NARR), which measures how much a single advertiser or cohort’s revenue expands, contracts and churns in the course of a current time period compared to a previous one. It’s widely seen as a trustworthy forecasting method for revenue leaders to base their decision making on. For a deeper dive on NARR, click here.

In this blog, we’ll outline best practices for growing NARR with an expansion strategy based on upselling and cross-selling.

Across the media industry, board of directors meeting and executive teams are discussing how they’ll grow margins and revenue. Profitable growth isn’t a new concept, but one that grew in priority during the pandemic for media companies of all types and sizes. With intense competition and a growing media efficiency crisis, media companies are facing strong headwinds in the pursuit of profitable growth. Active yield management is a critical component of healthy margins and maximizing monetization activities. Unfortunately, maximizing yield has only become more complex with a proliferation of new products and channels. In this blog, we’ll unpack the latest challenges to unlocking higher margins and more profitable growth through yield management.

The savviest Revenue Management organizations have revenue visibility across all channels and all products every day. They’re able to answer a simple, important but increasingly complex question, "How are we tracking to our goal for the time period?

These are best practices helping them do this:

1. Split Adjusting The Pipeline

In many media sales organizations, there is a split on deals between an agency and advertiser seller. Typically, these are pre-set per advertiser in advance but it’s important to have the flexibility for “one-off” deals requiring a team approach. By split adjusting each deal and providing a roll-up split-adjusted view, companies will avoid errors and double counting of the pipeline.

What is Revenue Forecasting?

Forecasting is the process of predicting the expected revenue to be recognized for a certain time period. Typically this is done for the enterprise, by region, by team, by seller and by product. It requires the pipeline and revenue streams to be combined into a single view. Simply put: Forecast = Weighted Pipeline + Recognized Revenue. Enter the era of complexity driven by many channels and products. Media Companies, who we’ll broadly define as anyone selling advertising solutions, are faced with forecasting challenges that didn’t exist five and ten years ago. A typical digital publisher must combine their pipeline with multiple revenue streams across Insertion Orders, Programmatic Guaranteed, Private Marketplaces and Open Exchange. Audio and Broadcast companies face similar challenges needing to combine both linear formats and digital revenue streams. Out of Home companies do as well. Often the forecast is compared to a revenue target such as a goal, quota or budget for the time period. Making this more complex is media companies have specialist teams who often focus on a specific product or set of products in an overlay type role. They need to produce forecasts similar to direct salespeople without double counting the revenue when rolled up for the organization.