Digital-Linear Convergence - Offering Your Advertisers the Best of Both Worlds

The broadcast industry has been talking about digital-linear convergence for years but recent growth in digital in general, and OTT in particular, has added new urgency to the conversation. In their 2020 State of OTT report, Comscore reported that total viewing hours across live TV, DVR, VOD, and OTT increased by 2.3 billion hours in April 2020 vs April 2019. A full 60% of that growth is attributed to OTT. A similar report from Absolute Markets Insights found that globally, OTT traffic showed an increase of 198% in April 2020. Much of that growth can be attributed to COVID-19 but it's growth that continues to hold steady.

The Comscore report also shows that the growth of free, ad-supported OTT services is out-pacing that of subscription services by almost double. That growth presents a significant opportunity for advertisers to reach audiences, but it also represents new revenue potential for broadcasters. And new revenue has never been more important in a broadcast landscape where linear revenues have been flat, if not declining.

At WideOrbit, digital-linear convergence means building tools to make it easy for broadcasters to manage both linear and digital inventory and ad sales within the WO Traffic or WO Network workflows they're already used to. That means providing the ability to easily offer advertisers and agencies traditional deals and automated ad buys for both media types, as well as combining linear and digital inventory into packages that offer advertisers the best of both worlds.

Advertisers want to easily reach consumers no matter how or where they're consuming content. Convergence means making it easy for advertisers to buy the inventory types they want, whether that's linear, digital, or both, and making it easy for broadcasters to both manage and sell that inventory.

WideOrbit provides the tools broadcasters need to do exactly that, easily, efficiently, and cost-effectively. Here's a brief overview of some of those tools.

Unified Sales Suite is a comprehensive suite designed to aggregate and compare multiple demand sources, so that stations can efficiently optimize new and traditional opportunities and sell against their available and pending linear and digital inventory.

Unified Sales Suite helps reduce negotiation and execution time by automating interactions with direct buyers and buy-side partners. It improves visibility across demand sources to ensure acceptance of only the best offers while reducing discrepancy rates through system-to-system communication and confirmations.

Digital Suite is a cross-media platform for distributing and monetizing digital inventory on any device. A comprehensive suite of products that supports live-stream, time-shifted, and on-demand content, Digital Suite helps stations and networks simplify and streamline digital ad operations.

Digital Suite provides a single, unified solution to monetize digital content, allowing broadcasters to manage linear and digital inventory using the same workflows. Our recently announced partnership with Amagi allows TV broadcasters to leverage the ad server within Digital Suite to dynamically insert ads into livestreams within their existing broadcast infrastructure, opening new revenue streams via OTT and CTV.

WO Ad eXchange, part of our Digital Suite, is a cloud-based monetization platform that automates ad transactions. With advanced targeting and support for both publisher-direct sales and real-time bidding, WO Ad eXchange allows buyers to efficiently aggregate and purchase digital inventory, providing sellers access to new demand and increased overall yield.

Digital Orders, available for WO Network or WO Traffic, enables broadcasters to sell, fulfill, invoice and report on digital and cross-screen campaigns within their WO Traffic or WO Network workflow. Billing is simplified by reconciling and invoicing both media types within a consolidated solution.

Digital Orders allows broadcasters to sell and manage cross-screen campaigns through a single ad operations system, eliminating redundant data entry for campaigns with spot and digital ad units. Unified revenue reporting provides access to actionable insights with a single report on linear and digital revenue and revenue pacing.

Contact us to learn more about how WideOrbit can help you easily offer advertisers the best of both worlds.

For press inquiries, contact media@wideorbit.com.

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