COMMENTARY

Survey: Local TV Station Execs Frustrated, Want Faster, Streamlined Ad Transactions

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

A new survey of local TV advertising buyers confirms what we already know when it comes to ongoing media-buying/selling issues: Everything is too slow and cumbersome — and in danger of haunting the business for years.

The three top concerns are: 1. Giving marketers the ability for an agency to launch campaigns in three days or less; 2. Getting rid of slow-moving make-goods and approval process; and 3. Speeding up final reconcile adjustments between pre-invoice activity and invoice delivery.

The survey comes from the TIP (Television Interface Practices) Initiative, an industry group promoting open interfaces to streamline advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agencies.

Every year, advertisers spend roughly $20 billion in media dollars on linear local TV station inventory.

Perry Sook, chairman, president-CEO of Nexstar Media Group, and founding member of the TIP Initiative, stated: “It takes time and effort to change the way an industry has operated for decades, but the tangible benefits to broadcasters and our trading partners are real and meaningful.”

We have heard this before, and we seem to be no closer, despite a number of independent local TV station-focused programmatic, automated ad platforms showing some growth.

The TIP survey -- done in January 2019 -- along with a white paper, keeps talking about “urgency” for media buyers and broadcasters.

Does that mean local TV buyers and sellers worry about losing more ground -- say next year -- to growing local digital media platforms impinging on TV’s ad revenues?

And, if little or nothing changes, will media agencies and their advertising clients look to siphon more money away from local TV -- at some point -- considering the high expense in managing and placing media referenced in those survey concerns?

Local TV is nowhere near real-time framework levels of digital media. Increasingly, when looking at publicly traded local TV station groups, many analysts focus on big political advertising revenue and seemingly ever-higher retranmission revenues.

The new ATSC 3.0 standard seemingly offers some hope for the future -- in terms of competing with digital platforms when it comes to new interactive content and possible automated, even addressable advertising.

But right now, we can’t expect much big change, even in the next five years. Urgency? Please define urgency.