What Is the Digital-Linear Convergence?
This term describes managing linear and digital ad sales in one platform with the same workflows. Linear in this connotation includes over-the-air, broadcast media. Digital translates to all third-party digital advertising.
The merging of linear and third-party digital helps your advertisers reach their goals while also optimizing your ad operations workflow. Advertisers want to reach customers where they are, and that landscape is currently a fragmented one.
Consumer Habits Create Fragmentation
People consume content via many channels and on various devices. Users still watch linear TV and listen to broadcast radio. They also stream on mobile devices or via smart TVs, which provides OTT ad opportunities. Further, consumption occurs through other channels like social media, search and apps.
Having so many places to engage with people creates fragmentation for advertisers.
Your customers want to optimize all ad dollars with strategic multimedia campaigns, and it’s hard to operationalize that process and bundle options without the right platform. Additionally, some media companies aren’t expanding their reach through digital offerings.
When linear and digital are on one proposal, your advertisers can clearly see how they hit different channels with targeted campaigns to drive the best possible outcomes.
Mastering Linear and Digital
To bring linear and digital together in an integrated marketing plan for advertisers, you’ll need to have several things in place.
Cross-Channel Advertising Platform
To scale and successfully execute linear and digital, you’ll need a cross-channel advertising platform. It should have several key features:
- Management of digital and airtime ads
- Proposal builder that includes both
- Order entry that’s simple and easy to duplicate
- Targeting capabilities for all ad products
- Reporting that consolidates campaigns into something intuitive for your client to understand
High Literacy Among Sellers
Those with long tenures in linear may have hesitations about selling digital advertising. They may also believe that their current clients don’t want to buy digital from them. There are many reasons your sales team is ideal to sell both, primarily because of their knowledge of the market, advertiser and audience.
For areas where they need digital literacy support, training and education are critical. They’ll need a variety of sales enablement resources to build confidence in selling all ad types.
Perfected Pitching to New and Existing Clients
The third spoke in the mastery of convergence is perfecting the pitch. Enabled salespeople with the right technology have no internal hurdles. They’ll need a pitch that explains the value of buying linear and digital together, and they’ll need the ability to overcome objections for some ad types, such as video.
Salespeople will continue to hone their pitching and can support it with digital advertising metrics. As more customers improve their ROI on ad spend, you’ll have more evidence to back up your points. Sharing best practices and wins internally will make each salesperson stronger.
Are You Ready for the Digital-Linear Convergence?
If you want to boost your revenue, you’ll need to look outside of only linear ad units. Growth isn’t sustainable when you can’t add new streams. Having the right technology, well-prepared staff and continuous improvements in selling will help you win more market share.
Learn more about how our products facilitate this with our platforms by requesting a consultation with our team.
