Increase your media planning and media buying productivity by automating tasks, organizing work, collaborating more effectively, and streamlining your workflow.
Bionic Enables Next Generation Audience Targeting
With the latest release of Bionic Media Planning Software, you can now deliver next generation audience targeting in your RFPs, proposals, media plans, and insertion orders.
Our Quixotic Quest to Slay the Paper Insertion Order
Until recently, developing electronic standards for the digital media industry was like Don Quixote fighting “giants” – a noble but unrealistic pursuit.
Advertiser vs. Agency Debate – Part III – Follow the Money
Until advertisers stop punishing agencies for efficiency through broken compensation systems, agencies will continue to have a talent problem.
I See Dead People… Responding to my Marketing!
In today’s digital marketing, we seem increasingly dependent on algorithms and attribution models for targeting and measurement.
Do Digital Media Agencies Have a Plan?
Digital agencies used to get paid for unpacking an incredibly complicated digital landscape for marketers. Faced with all kinds of new marketing opportunities, advertisers turned to savvy digital agencies to figure out where to spend their money, and how much of it to dedicate to display, mobile and social channels. The dingy little secret was that the agencies didn’t really plan much of anything. The way it worked was that agency planners would make an Excel template, create an RFP document, instruct the media owners to send back all kinds of creative ideas and fill out the media plan template. RFPs sent publisher teams spinning into action, churning out exciting-looking PowerPoints with screenshots and suggested spending levels. Not much of this was scientific. Publishers often promised more inventory than could be delivered, knowing they would never get the full budget allocation. Agencies asked for various “budget levels,” knowing they would allocate only $50,000 per publisher – but asking to see [...]
Master Gnarly Media Calculations with Bionic for Agencies
Bionic Planner gives you an easy way to confidently calculate and master tricky media equations, even those involving international currency exchanges.
Know These 5 AdTech Memes for 2014
Well, at least it’s not the “year of mobile” again. Or, maybe it is. After several days of media investment banking conferences (Gridley and JEGI), I can reliably report that 2014 will be “the year” of many uber-trends ,some of which will enrich the M&A bankers who have a focus on the increasingly frothy ad technology and marketing space. Here are five memes to consider: “Mobile First” If you were to believe every ad tech panelist, you might be inclined to throw your laptop in the East River. Apparently—despite desktop only slightly starting to lose overall time-spent share to mobile on a year-over-year basis—nobody is developing ad tech solutions for the desktop anymore. Everyone is “mobile first,” meaning that they are writing code for tablet and mobile phone browsers and apps before developing solutions for the poor laptop or desktop computer. Of course, mobile devices are showing explosive growth, and clearly where the majority of consumers’ time will be found [...]
The Battle for Workflow Automation
Even though programmatic RTB has seen the lion’s share of venture capital funding and an enormous amount of innovation, RTB buying only accounts for 20%-30% of all digital media dollars. The real money still flows through the direct buying process, with agencies spending up to 400 hours and $50,000 to create the typical campaign, and publishers burning through 1,600 hours a month and 18% of their revenue responding to RFPs. What a mess….and an opportunity. Everybody’s battling for a slice of that direct sales pie, and the game is all about helping buyers and sellers automate the manual processes that drive almost 80% of transactional value. The Holy Grail for both sides is a web based, connected platform that will enable planners and sellers to thrust aside Excel, and start to transact business in the cloud. Although a number of companies have tried and failed to deliver on the promise of workflow automation, the time seems ripe for true adoption, [...]
Release Notes for version 2.8 of the Bionic Digital Media Planner and Digital Ad Sales System
The version 2.8 release of the Bionic for Agencies and Bionic for Ad Sales features 8 major improvements in functionality and more than 20 bug fixes.
The Four Keys to Programmatic Direct Success
I was recently talking to the Chief Digital Officer of a large agency that does a lot of digital media buying. He has been working closely with a number of software providers to standardize his operations on a media management system. Getting all his vendor information, order management, and billing information has been a huge undertaking. Apparently, half the battle at an agency is getting paid (getting paid in less than 120 days is the other half)! We were talking about some of the upfront processes behind putting together a media plan, which were mostly manual: putting the actual plan together in Excel, trading e-mails back and forth with vendors in the RFP process, trafficking ad tags, collecting screenshots, etc. Wouldn’t it be valuable if computers could streamline much of that work, and connect buyers and sellers together more seamlessly? He agreed that it would truly transform his business, but accepted much of that manual work as part of the [...]