I've always been proud to be a life-long broadcaster, with my earliest exposure going back to a part-time after school job at the local television station in my small market hometown. Little did I know then that those teenage steps toward adult responsibility would lead me to invaluable experience in work and life, working for small, mid and large market broadcast companies, with the vast majority of experience at the ABC owned station in San Francisco. Traffic, inventory management, and coming up with reporting and workflow efficiencies for my team was both my passion and my challenge back in the day. Data was seemingly held hostage by disparate computer systems, none of which seemed to talk to one another and certainly didn't roll-up to corporate, resulting in endless redundancies.
I met Eric Mathewson in 1999 when he founded WideOrbit. I was both impressed and skeptical of his grand vision of an exchange to make is easier to buy and sell media. Central to this vision was the need to have a solid foundation where the data lived: traffic, sales and billing, and let's not forget reporting! With my colleagues from broadcasting and a group of start-up software engineers we set out to change the traffic world. It was a whirlwind experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. I vividly remember the day that I met Bill Offeman (now Will Offeman), when he showed us a prototype revenue report using this very cool feature called group panel . That feature changed everything in our approach to access data for our customers and was truly revolutionary at the time. Perhaps more pedestrian now, but no doubt it remains most customers' favorite feature, no matter the task.
Now many years removed from that WideOrbit start-up experience and concentrating on US local broadcast media, I am thrilled to be focused on building from those products to accommodate both linear and digital inventory types across any sales channel, all over the world. Over these 20 years, we've branched out well beyond our local television and radio roots, solving challenges for cable and broadcast networks, satellite services and international markets. But at the core of each solution is some form of the WO Traffic system that started it all. The nuances and the idiosyncrasies of the media world make ad operations tricky - not just how we store, access and manage the petabytes of data per client, but more so knowing how each step has to be executed in the most efficient manner in order to assure the next step is executed at the same level of efficiency.
To further complicate matters, our clients require workflow efficiency across linear AND digital media types, simultaneously. The workflows are not the same, nor are they executed at the same pace and content consumption is drastically different across mediums. We've had a fully comprehensive platform for digital audio in place for years now with our WO Streaming, WO On Demand and WO Programmatic Digital Audio products. A little-known fact: WideOrbit serves over 10 billion digital ad impressions each year! Currently, we are adding to that Digital Ad Solution in order to handle digital video inventory the way WO Traffic does for linear TV inventory. Starting with our existing Digital Orders and Multicast modules within WO Traffic, we are building ad decisioning and serving functionality in order to support live streaming, time-shifted podcasting, and advanced targeting of addressable ads for OTT and ATSC3.0. It's clear that our clients' need to monetize both linear & digital inventory are a priority for WideOrbit to address.
If the next 20 years at WideOrbit are anything like the past 20, we will be solving some sizeable hurdles for the media industry with regards to taking the best of digital and marrying it with the best of linear. That's easier said than done, and consumers will always be moving targets for advertisers. But if there's anything I can say about WideOrbit during my tenure - you can be sure we won't shy away from those challenges.
Arden Adair is Director of Product Management and she has been with WideOrbit since 2000. She is a former broadcast TV traffic manager who was recruited to leverage her real-life media operations experience in shaping WideOrbit's products. Visit https://www.wideorbit.com/products/#broadcast-traffic billing to learn more about WideOrbit's flagship traffic products.
Coming up next Part 4 of 5: Our Chief Technology Officer shares his thoughts on the various system architectures that can assure WideOrbit's software is optimized for performance.
For press inquiries, contact media@wideorbit.com.
North America Stories
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
Experimental HIV vaccine achieves a long-sought goal In a first for the field, all non-human primates given a new series of vaccines generated antibodies capabl...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
28/05/2026
Hosted by ESPN Senior Writer Ryan McGee, the ceremony honored winners from athletic departments, conference offices, professional networks, production companies...
28/05/2026
Major rights-holders rolled out their 2026 college football slates today, offering a first look at marquee windows, kickoff partners, and conference distributio...
28/05/2026
The 4 Nations Face-Off, an international competition that launched in February 2...
28/05/2026
Soccer is a truly global sport, and, to match the U.S. viewing audience's in...
28/05/2026
The NFL Today, CBS Sports' top-of-the-line NFL studio show, has a storied hi...
I've always been proud to be a life-long broadcaster, with my earliest exposure going back to a part-time after school job at the local television station in my small market hometown. Little did I know then that those teenage steps toward adult responsibility would lead me to invaluable experience in work and life, working for small, mid and large market broadcast companies, with the vast majority of experience at the ABC owned station in San Francisco. Traffic, inventory management, and coming up with reporting and workflow efficiencies for my team was both my passion and my challenge back in the day. Data was seemingly held hostage by disparate computer systems, none of which seemed to talk to one another and certainly didn't roll-up to corporate, resulting in endless redundancies.
