Speaking the same language

We have an ongoing problem in the interactive industry. We are in love with ourselves! Our sales people fall into the same trap year after year talking about the latest buzz words to look smart constantly talking right over the buyer. The engineers continue to make the decisions about how the media buying process should work without actually listening to the customers. We are not connecting with our buyers in a way that makes them comfortable, helps them meet their client objective specifically and ultimately creates a true dialogue addressing the problems they face everyday.

Now I am sure some folks will say we are making it easier to buy and sell display inventory via the ad networks or with RTB (real time bidding) exchanges. Others will tell me that their sales people are listeners and solution sellers which gets them in deep with their clients providing amazing creative and integrated media programs.

Even if these things are true the problem still exists. Buyers create media plans based on a large number of variables including environment, brand, demographics, intent, historical purchase behavior and many other interesting factors that we have not event scratched the surface of on the Internet. Once the buyer has built their plan they create an RFP that usually highlights these variables along with their client objective and asks a number of publishers to respond. Here is where the problem starts - publishers take the info in the RFP and then try to sell the buyer something other than what they wanted. For example, the buyer for Tide wants to reach Women age 25-44, with 2 kids in the house under 18 and interested in the environment. They have $100k to spend and what happens, the publisher takes that and responds with a program including a homepage takeover for one day, a 50% share of voice in their new 'green living' section that launched last month and another gazillion impressions ROS.

The buyer gets this back and has no idea how those inventory packages will perform based on the target and reach they laid out in the RFP. Compare this with how TV is bought and sold with is on clear metrics, research data that is normalized and shared between both the buyer and sell and a currency (GRP/TRP) that everyone understands and agrees works. Our industry needs to stop talking about the next cool thing and remember there are fundamentals in the media business (especially the brand sales process) that we simply have ignored for far to long. We need to created a dialogue with media buyers that they understand, the technology we build needs to be transformational and help the buyer connect directly with the inventory they buy for the client in a way that simply makes sense to them. If we do this the money will come our way!