NextMark has hit yet another milestone with the Digital Media Advertising Index: more than 5,000 of the top digital media advertising programs are now represented via data cards. It was just four months ago that we hit the 2,500 record milestone. Great momentum!

The top publishers have been very enthusiastic about posting their data cards in the index for four good reasons:
1) It makes it easier for media planners to find them
2) It makes it easier for media planners to buy from them
3) It’s easy to use
4) It’s free

The data card index complements other website indexing services like those from comScore, Nielsen, and Google that to a great job with website metrics such as number of visitors, page views, and basic visitor demographics. Those other services help media planners to find sites on which to advertise, but they don’t answer all questions a media planner needs to know when building a media plan such as:

• “Does the site accept advertising?”
• “What more can you tell me about the site and the visitors?”
• “What are the placement options?”
• “How much inventory is available?”
• “How much does it cost?”
• “Who do I contact for more information?”

Those are the types of questions that are answered on NextMark’s data cards. Data cards have been used by media planners for years in other traditional media channels through SRDS, NextMark, and others. However, it’s been effectively absent from digital media. NextMark is trailblazing this initiative by adapting and evolving the data card concept for digital media.

The goal of the index is simple: to make it easier for media planners to find, compare, and buy digital media advertising programs.

Here’s how it all began…

When NextMark first launched its self-service data card publishing wizard at the turn of the new millennium, the new interface was met with mixed emotions. Some media managers and list owners were excited to finally have control over their promotional content, but others were not looking forward to the extra work. This created some gaps in regards to the attention that data cards received, subsequently creating issues for researchers who rely on data cards for purchase decisions and campaign planning.

To further encourage media managers to update their data cards and improve their content for researchers and campaign managers, NextMark introduced a new service on October 15, 2000 to integrate data cards on managers’ web sites. This created an even greater sense of ownership and brand awareness, but it was still not enough to address the issues of missing contact information, out-of-date counts, and other deficiencies.

On May 13, 2003, NextMark introduced its first data card quality report by electronically analyzing over 30,000 data cards (currently over 70,000). For each data card, a proprietary algorithm rates the quality of 13 key attributes. The primary objective of this initiative was to make sure that data cards were complete and accurate, and there was a little improvement.

On February 21, 2008, the data card quality report went public with a ranking of the top 50 managers. This resulted in a vanity check for companies that did not make the list, so a refined version was released on June 23, 2008 to categorize the top managers by number of data cards in their respective portfolios.

As word got out, some good things started to happen. Data card publishers began to pay close attention to the scores and the rankings, and many began to institute best practices for timely updates and list content management. Scores have been improving ever since, but something else also started to happen.

Data card quality rankings became a promotional opportunity for media managers and the scores were often taken out of context. The scoring algorithm, intended to measure completeness and update recency, grew in perception as a holistic measure for media management firms. Although unintended, this created some confusion.

To keep it simple, here’s the 3 point truth about data card quality.

Point 1:  data card quality is independent of list quality.

Point 2:  data card quality measures completeness and update recency.

Point 3:  data card quality does not measure content quality or accuracy.

You should not judge a media manager on data card quality alone, and there are more important factors to consider. For example, take a look at the following catalog list rate card and you will notice that it has a high ‘popularity index‘ in addition to a quality presentation of the media (postal list in this case) it represents. The counts are current through the end of the most recent month, the monthly and quarterly hotlines are provided, and the average age and income is provided for the audience. It is important to also be aware of the fact that some media managers may confirm an update without actually changing the counts. We are on to them and will flagging that accordingly to make sure our research users are aware of the difference.

As with any new product launch, listening and adapting is the key to success. I never get anything right on the first try. Here’s what we’ve learned from agencies and publishers since introducing the RFC seven weeks ago.

What we learned from Agencies

As any sales rep will attest, it’s not easy getting a meeting with a media director. They are incredibly busy people with jammed calendars. Despite their busy schedules, many have asked us to come in to show them and their teams the RFC and Media Magnet. I think they’ve invited us mainly because they hate the RFP and are hungry for an alternative.

So far, 31 leading digital agencies have begun using Media Magnet and 6 more are being set up this week. I’m very pleased with the initial adoption by these great companies and grateful for working with them to improve the industry workflow.  I’m also happy to report that 100% of the agencies we’ve met with have signed on to try Media Magnet.

In initially introducing Media Magnet, we presented agencies with two key benefits: efficiency and innovation. We discovered a third unforeseen benefit through these initial discussions: organization of proposals. One of the challenges that agencies face is tracking and managing of all the proposals they get. We thought it was a given that the Media Magnet should be good at organizing information. We did not realize how much of an improvement it was over existing systems (emails, file servers, etc.). So, we are now including organization as a key benefit.

We learned that agencies want a lot of visibility and control. That’s not really a surprise. In our initial implementation, the list of publishers who received campaign alerts was not displayed. Media planners need to be able to see this list and to be able to control it.  They want to be able to add and remove publishers from the list.

We made a mistake in positioning Media Magnet as a standalone product that runs alongside other RFP tools. We assumed that every agency already had good RFP automation.  Since Media Magnet implements a fundamentally different process (the RFC), our initial approach was to say, “keep using whatever you are using today for RFPs and use Media Magnet to source additional ideas with minimal effort with the RFC.” But this has resulted in proposals coming in from two different directions. Media Planners want all their proposals from all sources in one place.  They don’t want to get proposals from RFPs one way and proposals from RFCs another way.

We also learned that Media Magnet should be extended to support the RFP process. As one media director put it, “You are selling the product short by limiting it to the RFC. You could easily add RFP capabilities.” Easier said than done, but the point was well-taken. It makes sense to be able to run RFPs and RFCs through a single interface.

We’re now in the process of building version 2.0 of Media Magnet, which incorporates the initial learnings: transparency and control of alerts and RFP automation. We’re already pretty far along with the development and it should be out by the end of this month (exact date TBD).

What we learned from Publishers

Publishers are also willing to try out the RFC.  Hundreds of publishers are already getting campaign alerts.  22 publishers have already signed up for “Pro” Compass accounts which gives them access to the Campaign Navigator and all the campaigns on the system. Another 27 have requested free trials and are in the process of getting set up.

Publishers are impressed by the clean and simple design of the product. However, to our dismay, they don’t care about technology.  As one ad sales rep put it, “The last thing I need is another system to log into.” What they care most about is qualified sales leads.  They like when they get an email saying, “Here’s a new campaign that matches your inventory. Check it out.”

We’ve no significant product enhancement requests from publishers. What they want is more sales leads. Publishers want us to ramp up the number of campaigns in the system.  There’s only been a trickle of campaigns so far because we are just starting to get agencies up and running on the system.  You can expect a significant increase in the coming weeks.  Until that trickle becomes a flow, publishers will continue to get free access to Compass.

NextMark is 12 years old today. We opened our doors here in Hanover, NH on March 28, 2000. I’m thinking back on the good and bad times and want to share some of the highlights.

Six of us built and launched our first product, a multi-channel media planning system. Meg Houston Maker, Jim Ford, Mark Moales, Mike Yacavone, Wei Shen, and I were NextMark’s founding team. We lived on the bleeding edge by developing our software for the web, which is known today as “Software as a Service” or “Cloud Computing.” Back then there were no good software development frameworks and we had to roll our own security system, caching, persistence, etc. It was not easy, but we persevered. Although those home-grown components have since all been replaced, sticking to the SaaS vision was one of our best product decisions we’ve ever made.

Merit Direct was our first customer in May 2001. A dozen others soon followed. They liked the system because it made their lives a lot easier. The system gave them an internet-style search engine that media it easy to find media programs (back then we embedded Alta Vista’s search engine), a shopping cart-style method of creating media plans, and the ability to download an information-packed Excel media plan with a single button click. This product is now the standard for direct marketing media planning and is used by virtually everyone in the business. The “faster, better, easier, and cheaper” theme set the stage for all our future products.

The years 2001-2003 were lean and painful.

I only raised enough money at the start to prove the concept. Although we had good products and great customers, the subscription model we chose didn’t grow revenue quickly. Our sales in 2001 were a meager $112,000 and our expenses were $862,000. We soon ran out of money and I had to go back to “tin cupping” (asking investors for money when you don’t have any). I found a hostile environment: investors were nervous because those were the dot com bust years and technology companies were going out of business left and right. I ended up patching together a series of bridge loans, some from MerchantBanc Venture Partners (thank you!) and some from my own savings, to keep the business afloat. We were on our last payroll five times during that period. I remember having $5,000 in the bank on a Wednesday and needing $30,000 to cover payroll on that Friday and being flat broke myself. This was not fun, but we always got through it somehow.  I aged considerably during that time.

On 9/11, I was in a car with a director on our way to a meeting with a competitor on lower Broadway in Manhattan. Despite only a few months in the market, our product got their attention when we started winning customers away from them. The purpose of this meeting was to explore licensing our technology to them as the high-end product in their suite – they had the sales force and we had the technology. We were driving through Manchester, CT when we heard the news the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. We knew immediately our trip to NYC was cancelled and pulled over and watched the surreal events unfold from a bar in the Marriott. 9/11 threw everything into disarray.  That meeting with the competitor was never rescheduled, the discussion lost momentum, and we never seriously talked about licensing again. Besides affecting this particular deal, 9/11 hurt us in many other ways because it disrupted the entire media industry when advertising spending stalled. It was hard for everyone.

To make our situation worse, a key data supplier pulled the rug out from under us in 2002. While in negotiations and without warning or reason, they sent a termination notice that would effectively shut us down because our software relied on their data. I was was thinking we’d have to close the business and I immediately notified each of our customers that our product would soon be shut down. Although it was painful for me to deliver this news, it was the right thing to do because it would affect their businesses. To my surprise, our customers revolted against this data supplier and forced them to extend the data license. And the new agreement was on much better terms.

This was a turning point in the business.  This revolt demonstrated our value in the marketplace. It also made it easier to raise the money we needed. Venture Capital Fund of New England led a round that helped to “cross the chasm” and we’ve been profitable since 2003. No more tin cupping!

In 2005, we launched our second major product – an order entry system for direct marketing. Merkle, InfoGroup, and Carney Direct were among the first customers. They liked this system because it saved lots of time and eliminated tons of errors. In one example, we reduced the amount of time to send invoices from 30 hours per campaign to 10 minutes per campaign and in the error rate from above 50% to zero. This system was a complete nightmare to build because it has a million moving parts to support all the crazy deals that salespeople come up with. It’s a complicated business and this system had to create accurate purchase orders, invoices, receipts, etc. Everything has to be exactly right and give management a real-time view of their business. This has grown to become the #1 solution and processes more than 20,000 orders a month today.

We initially missed the boat on digital.

I distinctly remember a meeting in October 2005 with Randy Blasch of Response Media at his office near Atlanta. He was encouraging us to build an operating system (orders, invoices, etc.) to integrate Atlas, which was their ad server at the time, and Great Plains, which was their accounting system. He thought we could do the same for digital media as we did for traditional media.  Although I liked his proposal, shame on me for narrow-mindedly telling Randy basically “we’re too busy with other work and nobody else is asking us for this.” So, we kept our focus on traditional media for the time being.

In 2008, we acquired competitor Marketing Information Network or MIN. This doubled our business overnight. As we integrated the operations, we accelerated improvements to products and services. By combining the two operations, we eliminated the duplication, improved our own workflow, and shifted resources to the things that our customers valued the most: the software, the data, and the service.

We finally came around to digital in 2010. It became increasingly clear we needed to focus our resources and make big bets on digital. Although still only a relatively small part of media spending, digital media was growing quickly and represented the future. But the board was divided on making these bets. In February 2010, we hired outside advice from Winterberry Group. Among all the alternatives considered (and there were many), their recommendation was to focus our resources on digital. Based on this recommendation, the board reached consensus and we’ve never looked back.

Although we continue to fully maintain and support our traditional offerings, our new development is focused on digital media – particularly online display, mobile display, and online video. Fortunately, we’re not too late to the party and there are still plenty of big problems to be solved particularly in match-making, collaboration, and workflow – our strong suits.

Our initial approach for digital media was wrong. We started to extend our existing systems to support digital media.  After all, we already supported 12 media channels… how hard can it be to support 3 more channels?  We quickly learned this approach was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Cramming digital media capabilities into our legacy system would confuse existing users and new users would be confused by all the legacy features. So, we abandoned that approach and instead decided to create brand new apps for digital media from the ground up. We upgraded our platform so it would be easy for users to switch between the old and the new apps.

In February 2012, we launched our first digital media-specific products: Media Magnet and Compass which implement the new RFC process. And a new digital media planning system is in the works slated for release later this year. Although the digital media products are only a month in the market, 25 leading digital agencies and 300+ publishers are already on board. They like our mission, our approach, and the value these new tools bring to them. As with our initial products, these new products make their life easier and help them to operate more efficiently and effectively.

So here we are on our 12th birthday and NextMark is still feeling like a start-up. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and where we are now. The company is stronger than ever. The team is better than ever. The customers are better than ever. The work is as challenging as ever. And I’m having more fun than ever!

The “RFC” or “Request for Consideration” is new method of media planning that was introduced by NextMark in February 2012. The RFC is an alternative/complement to the “RFP” or “Request for Proposal” process that has been traditionally used in the media buying/selling process.

The RFP and RFC are both methods for match-making among buyers and sellers. With the RFP, the buyer requests proposals from sellers. The RFC takes the opposite approach and turns the RFP process inside out. With the RFC, sellers request consideration from the buyer. In other words, the seller says “Here’s why I think this program deserves to be in your media plan. Will you please consider it?”

The motivation for the RFC is the universal dissatisfaction with the RFP. It seems nobody in digital media likes the RFP.

This inspiration for the RFC comes from interviews with buyers and sellers and an understanding of the dynamics of today’s digital media marketplace. The RFP works great in an environment where the options are limited, well-known and relatively static – like TV was in 1962. Fast forward 50 years to today’s digital media and you find the opposite: tens of thousands of options that change every day. It’s virtually impossible for a digital media buyer to keep up with the market and to make efficient and optimal decisions. The RFC addresses this problem by shifting the burden of proof from the buyer to the seller and gives the seller more responsibility in the match-making process.

The RFC employs a patent-pending method and protocol between buyers and sellers. The RFC match-making algorithm utilizes NextMark’s proprietary index of the top digital media programs. As you see in the the attached flowchart, the process starts and ends with the media planner. The media planner makes all decisions regarding the media plan.  However, with the RFC the seller has the ability to discover the campaign and make a proposal without requiring the media planner to specifically request it. This opens up the process to both innovation and efficiency. In implementing the RFC, it’s important to include spam controls and identity protection to protect the time of the media planner. Otherwise, more time will be wasted than saved.

The RFC is currently implemented in two commercially available products by NextMark: (1) Media Magnet for media planners and (2) Compass for ad salespeople. Both products access the RFC platform via a web API. The RFC engine and API is available to third party software developers via licensing agreement.

With limited budgets of both time and money, where can I get the most bang for my advertising buck? Business owners continue to ask this question with an increasing volume of choices powered by the proliferation of social media sites and digital advertising opportunities.

Any company seeking new business today has a wide variety of media choices, from print, radio/TV, web sites and social media. Continuing research has shown that one of the most cost effective forms of getting new business is through good, consistent, targeted direct mail. Targeted direct mail lists have several advantages that make them unique. If you know your best customers, then you can use targeted direct mail to reach more of them and generate qualified new business leads. This applies to traditional brick and mortar stores, professionals, or even start up web sites.

Direct mail has the advantage of being perceived as the least intrusive and therefore the most welcome type of advertising. Several studies over the years confirm that most people prefer direct mail to other types of advertising. A recent article, “The Future is Now” in the industry magazine Deliver makes a strong case in support of this. Furthermore, there is less competition in the mail box (due to increasing diversification of marketing budgets online), and this may often lift response.

Unlike an e-mail or SMS text message which can be deleted by the push of a button there seems to be something about a direct mail piece, be it a postcard or a letter that conveys legitimacy on the part of the mailer and encourages the recipient to keep it.

There are a few tried and true techniques that should be employed, or at least tested, on your direct mail campaign

1. Have a clear call to action. Give your direct mail recipients a compelling reason to contact you.
2. Make an offer they can’t refuse. Give them something such as a discount or a two for one offer — something to entice them to try your product or service.
3. Include an expiration date on the offer.

Probably the most important advantage of direct mail is the ability to precisely target audiences better then other forms of advertising. This is due to the lists and data that power its distribution to the right audience. No other channel (online or offline) has the wealth of acquisition data to drive lifetime value (LTV). Although many online advertising sources are real-time, they are often lacking in regards to the big picture of a customer’s purchase (or giving in the case of non-profits) behavior over time.

You may have the most relevant message, and your printing and graphics may be the best money can buy, but the single most important element in the success or failure of your marketing efforts is your selection of the most targeted and appropriate mailing list.

Targeting of your most concise audience is paramount. It many cases it is not enough to target by demographics like age and income you need to target by affinity or interest.

In response to the splintering of the homogenous mass market of yesterday, list marketers have been working at identifying the moving targets and shifting trends of the market place. There are literally hundreds of different lists available to target just about any niche market or affinity group you can think of.

Specialists Marketing Services recently launched a new mailing lists search portal for its Direct Data Division that provides visitors with easy access to rate cards and information about specialty lists and data.

Here you can find an audience for just about any product or service. Keep in mind, you want to reach as many qualified prospects as you can without wasting your message on those who are not interested or can’t purchase your product — targeted direct mail does just that.

If offline marketing with direct mail is not part of your overall mix, then you may be sacrificing LTV at the expense of impressions and clicks. An integrated approach is best.

“A pair of efforts are underway to change the dreaded RFP process. NextMark  wants to turn it on its head, taking a page out of the Lending Tree model. The idea behind its “request for consideration” is rather than sending out RFPs to dozens of publishers, media planners would simply post the specifics of what the campaign (budget, campaign dates, target audience) to a site that would match it to likely publisher candidates. Another effort by video ad exchange Adap.tv wants to adapt the auction models that are popular in real-time bidding for reserved buys. And Google, ever the critic of waste in ad buying, is rolling out a “direct deals interface” in April that it promises will eliminate the need for a flurry of emails and phone calls between buyers and sellers.”

[See the full story on Digiday]

The RFC has only been available for 11 days, but already 22 agencies are actively testing the RFC as an alternative / complement to the RFP process.

FYI Free trials of NextMark’s implementation of the “Request for Consideration” or “RFC” are available. Choose from the  two applications that support the RFC:
1) Media Magnet for media planners/buyers at digital agencies
2) Compass for ad salespeople at digital publishers

The agenda was similar to the one in NYC, but the discussion was fresh because of the new set of experts.

Panel 1 – Getting on the RFP List

The first panel’s topic was “Getting on the RFP List.” It was moderated by Susan Beard, National Account Manager at The Washington Post Digital. The panelists were:

• Melissa Romig, VP Digital Media & Measurement at Allen & Gerritsen
• Paula Berkel, Associate Media Director at Carat
• Michelle Abreu, VP of Digital Marketing at Bank of America

Here are some of my notes from the session:

• Melissa – “Most of my team would say they don’t have enough time at their desk to get their work done.”
• Paula – “I’m at my desk until 9:30 a.m. then gone to 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. when I catch up and get more work done.”
• Melissa – “I like it when a vendor sends me an Outlook invite after we’ve set up a meeting because it gets it right into my calendar and I won’t accidentally double-book it.”
• Melissa – “Don’t waste time in a meeting going through roles and clients. Get that up front because it’s a waste of time away from your offer”
• Paula – “We try to keep our vendor meetings to 30 minutes. Plan for 20.”
• Paula – “Visuals are good. Powerpoint is good as long as it is well put-together.”
• Paula – “I have no hope of responding to every email because otherwise I’d be working 50 hours per day.”
• Melissa – “Expect a 30 minute meeting.  However, you can get a full hour if you bring us lunch.”
• Melissa – “We try to meet with everyone.  However, expect at least a six week lead time when setting up a meeting because we are so backed up.”

After the panel, I asked Melissa about her perspective on meeting with vendors. She told me that she follows the advice that Sarah Fay gave her when she was working for her at Carat. Sarah advised that you never know where people will end up and you should always treat them with respect.  Plus, you have to meet new people to get new ideas. That’s great advice.  Should we say that Melissa follow the “Fay Doctrine” in dealing with vendors?

I can certainly attest to Melissa’s willingness to meet. She met with me back when our Media Magnet and the Digital Media Planning Systems were just a concept and we wanted to validate our assumptions. She and her team met with us and provided some great feedback that helped us to design better products.  And, because we bought lunch, we got the full hour!

Panel 2 – Getting on the Media Plan

The second panel, moderated by Anthony DeMaio, Director East Coast Advertising at The Washington Post Digital, was on the subject of “Getting on the Media Plan.” The Panelists were:

• Victor Lee, VP of Digital Media at Hasbro
• Kaileen Hanlon, Account Director at Media Contacts
• Andrew Plunkett, Digital Media Supervisor at Hill Holliday

Some of my notes from this session:

• Victor – “The difference maker in the RFP is the people that come in, whether or not I trust them, whether they have good ideas, and they are different. What wins is the people and the ideas.”
• Andrew – “The number of RFPs depends on many factors.  Typically 5-10 per campaign.”
• Victor – “I don’t want my agency wasting time summarizing proposals. Instead, I ask them to rip the most important page out the proposal and I read that.”
• Victor – “I have some advice to vendors: no one is the best. No one is world class. No one is one of a kind. No ones is state of the art. So, don’t tell me that because it is a turn off.”
• Andrew – “What I like about the RFC is it organizes information and has the potential for innovative and brilliant ideas.”
• Kaileen – “We like to host a media day where we bring in all the vendors and give them each some time.”
• Andrew – “It sticks with me when the vendor brings in useful market research.”
• Kaileen – “Mobile remarketing is an example of something that is innovative.”
• Victor – “Everything has to be multi-channel. No channel is a silo anymore.”
• Kaileen – “If you follow up, you need to add value every time you do. For example, updated information or a better price.”
• Victor – “Effectiveness is what wins. I’m okay with trying something new and failing.”

NextMark was among 50+ bowling teams from the media industry who gathered last night at Lucky Strikes Lanes to raise $425,000 to cure breast cancer. The money was raised as part of the 3rd annual NYC Bowling for Breastcancer.org event.

Besides having a fun night at the lanes, the NextMark “Magnets” team raised $7,225 thanks to the fundraising efforts of Kristin Ciccone, Denise Groover, Grace Meiners, Kurt Gantrish, Amanda Arcone, Dewi Paulino, Tom Polley, Jeff Stearns, and Joe Pych. Great job!

The Request for Proposal or RFP has been described by digital media veterans as the “bane of their existence.” That’s because the RFP process is fundamentally broken in the dynamic context of digital media.

Introducing a new alternative to the RFP: the “Request for Consideration” or “RFC.”

While others have failed to solve the RFP problem by automating it, the RFC takes an entirely new approach by literally turning the RFP inside out. As one media director observed, “it’s like LendingTree for media planners.” Others have called the RFC “a game changer” that could “eliminate the need for the RFP.”

You can learn more about the RFC, how it differs from the RFP, and how it works by attending a free 25-minute webinar on Tuesday, February 21st.

>>> Sessions customized for digital media planners:

• Tue, Feb 21, 2012 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM EST
• Tue, Feb 21, 2012 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM EST

>>> Sessions customized for digital ad salespeople:

• Tue, Feb 21, 2012 12:30 PM – 1:00 PM EST
• Tue, Feb 21, 2012 3:30 PM – 4:00 PM EST

If you can’t make one of these sessions, but want to learn about the RFC, please let us know and we’ll arrange a webinar for you.

I love this “what they think” collage on media buyers recently posted on Digiday. So true!  Especially, the “what I actually do” part – slaving away in Excel.

Data cards are not only available on NextMark, but also on most list management web sites (many of which are hosted via the MarketMax Pro solution). An examples of these are the Parcel Magazine Mailing List and Developerfusion from World Innovators, and Pet Industry TotalBase from List Solutions.

“This online media is no longer new, and should be viewed as an extension of the services that traditional list brokers and managers represent and recommend to their clients,” says Lee Kroll, President, Kroll Direct Marketing.

You can download a free copy of the “2012 Data Card Trends Report” to see how the landscape is changing on our platforms.

It was standing room only last night as 180+ digital media pros packed the Manhattan room of the Marriott Marquis overlooking Times Square. Only expecting 140-150, they had to bring in extra chairs to handle the overflow.

Who would have guessed that the mundane topic of RFPs would draw such a crowd on a Tuesday night in January?  The RFP is certainly a hot topic (or sore subject?) among those in the digital media business.

Online Marketing Network organized the event which was billed as “Learn How to Earn RFP’s and Win Media Business from Top Media Executives.”

The event featured two panel discussions with top media executives including:

• Sarah Rankin, VP, Associate Media Director at Deutsch
• Kallana Warner, Media Supervisor at Media Contacts
• Charles Pinkerton, Partner & Director of Communication Insights at The Media Kitchen
• David Simone, Associate Media Director at MEC
• Matthew Granish, Associate Media Director at DraftFCB
• Jennifer Hartwick, Digital Media Manager at Mindshare
• Jaimie Sparber, Digital Media Manager at G2
• Sheevani Raikundalia, Sales Manager, East Coast Advertising, Washington Post Digital – moderator
• Rob Shore, National Account Manager at Washington Post Digital – moderator

These experts gave advice on topics including:

• “Day in the Life” of a Media Buyer & Planner
• Best Practices for Meeting Requests
• Effective Meetings & Presentations
• Communication & Staying Top of Mind
• Understanding the RFP and Decision Making Process
• How to Make your Proposal Stand Out
• Communication Process & Follow Up
• Managing Client & Agency Relationships

The panels gave dozens of tips on how to properly present a media program to a media planner. For example, “use bullet points” (notice my generous use of bullet points above

One overall theme was how incredibly hard a digital media planner’s job is.  Besides actually getting work done, they “sometimes get 30 calls a day” from ad sales people. The next time a media planner fails to return your call, think about what it’s like to be in their shoes. And work harder to make their life easier.

The other overall theme is how difficult it is for an ad sales person to cut through all that clutter to get noticed. That’s not an easy job and not for someone who can’t deal with rejection and adversity.

As a follow up to the 9 ways the RFP fails in digital media buying, this article shows how today’s digital media landscape has rendered the RFP obsolete.

The RFP process has been used in the advertising business since the beginning.  But the dynamics of the media landscape has changed significantly since then.

50 years ago, in the Mad Men era, there were few media options to choose from.  Think ABC, NBC, and CBS. Budgets were big. Planning cycles were long.  Everyone knew everyone.   It was easy to create your consideration set. The RFP process worked well in this environment of limited and static supply.  We did not have all these problems with the RFP back in those days.

Fast forward 50 years to today. We are in the digital media era. There are tens of thousands of digital media options to choose from and the landscape is evolving every day. Budgets are relatively small. Planning cycles are short. Staffing is a revolving door for both buyers and sellers. We have lots of problems with the RFP.

Today’s problems with the RFP can be traced back to today’s media landscape as follows:

1. False Positives – Smaller budgets and faster planning cycles mean less time to pre-qualify programs. Buyers sometimes take a “shotgun approach” in an effort to avoid omissions. A rule of thumb is to RFP three times as many sellers as you need for your media plan.

2. Omissions – with tens of thousands of options to choose from, it’s practically impossible for a buyer – experienced or not – to find and include all relevant programs in their consideration set

3. Contacts – with tens of thousands of programs and frequent staffing turnover in the sales department, it’s practically impossible for a buyer to keep their contact database complete and up-to-date.

4. Delays – as a result of the shotgun approach, there are many proposals to gather. Some RFPs are ignored or go to the wrong person. The biggest and best sellers often have a backlog.

5. Non-responders – as a defense to being on the receiving end of the “shotgun approach” and knowing they may be “column fodder,” sellers cherry pick which RFPs to which they respond.

6. Bad Formats – In an effort to streamline their proposal process, sellers have each developed their own standard proposal templates.  These templates vary widely from seller to seller.

7. Incomplete proposals –Knowing they may be column fodder, sellers take shortcuts to minimize the amount of time they spend on proposals that they don’t think have a high expected value.

8. Time Consuming – a combination of the problems above make the RFP process time consuming: writing the RFP, finding the right programs for the consideration set, tracking down the contacts, sending the RFPs, responding to the RFPs with proposals, gathering the proposals, reconciling the formats, evaluating the proposals.

9. Expensive – time is money for both buyers and sellers

The RFP continues to be a valuable tool at the line item level in cases where the probability of including a given program in a media plan is high. For example, if the advertiser has successfully used the media program in the past or a high degree of confidence for other reasons, the RFP is useful for getting updates, inventory counts, and negotiated pricing.  However, because of the problems described above, the RFP cannot be expected to source every program in a modern media plan.

The RFP process works well in an environment of well-known and relatively static set of choices. However, the RFP breaks down when there are an overwhelming number of dynamic choices. Today’s digital media landscape is clearly the latter case.  While still useful in certain cases at the line item level, the RFP is not well-suited for creating comprehensive digital media plans.

“The RFP is broken” is often heard among digital media planning/buying and digital ad sales teams (called “buyer” and “seller” in this article). However, the RFP – or Request for Proposal – has remained an ingrained part of the digital media buying process for guaranteed inventory.

This article explores the problems with using the RFP process in digital media buying.

The purpose of the RFP

The proposals that come in response to the RFP provide the buyer with benefits that include:

• Information – Proposals (RFP responses) contain the information a buyer needs to decide whether or not to include a given program in their media plan
• Ideas – proposals sometime present fresh “out of the box” ideas that benefit the advertiser
• Pricing – Proposals often include special negotiated pricing and other special terms
• Inventory – Proposals typically reveal how much inventory is available during the flight of the campaign

How do RFP’s fail?

Buyers and sellers cite the following problems with the RFP:

1. False Positives – programs in the consideration set that are not a good match for the campaign criteria. This wastes time for both the buyer and seller.

2. Omissions – relevant programs missing from the consideration set

3. Contacts – difficulty gathering contact information for sellers from each program.

4. Delays – the RFP process may take two weeks or more to conduct start to finish

5. Non-responders – RFPs that receive a late response or no response at all

6. Bad Formats – proposals come in a variety of formats (e.g. Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel) which creates extra work for the buyer in reconciling and standardization

7. Incomplete proposals – proposals that do not provide the information requested in the questions in the RFP

8. Time Consuming – the RFP process is time consuming for both buyers and sellers. For a buyer, it typically takes 38 hours across 4 job functions to conduct the RFP process. For a seller, it typically takes 4 hours to respond to an RFP with a proposal. A campaign with 10 RFPs consumes 78 hours of work for buyers and sellers.

9. Expensive – the RFP process is expensive for both buyers and sellers. For example, it typically costs a buyer $3,018 per campaign to perform the RFP process. Sellers collectively spend at least as much bringing the total to more than $6,000 per campaign.

With all these problems, you have to wonder why the RFP is relied upon so heavily in the digital media buying process.  Find out in our next post “Why the RFP fails in digital media buying.”

The 1,000 site milestone seemed like a big deal when we hit it last month. But now it seems so yesterday… today we hit another milestone: more than 2,500 sites are now represented in our data card index. Congratulations to the Accounts and Market Intelligences teams for establishing the relationships and doing the research and data entry to hit this goal ahead of schedule.

We’re running at a pace of more than 200 sites per day so it won’t be long before we hit our next milestone: 10,000 sites.

There’s been a lot of talk about how inefficient the process of placing digital advertisements is as compared to TV and other traditional media.

For example, according to Google, “Managing display ad campaigns can take up 28% of the budget in overhead, compared to 2% for TV. Which means for every $100 you spend on display, $28 goes to process management such as negotiation with multiple sites, re-planning, faxing insertion orders, trafficking hundreds of ad tags and so on. Such inefficiencies have impeded the growth of the industry.”

Being process and workflow geeks, we wanted to understand this inefficiency at a  deeper level.  So, we conducted our own study to drill into this from a media agency’s perspective.

The goal of the study was to answer a basic question: “How much does it cost an agency to create and execute a digital media plan?“

We faced our first big challenge right out of the gate. This question is not as simple as it seems because the cost depends on myriad factors.  When we asked “how much?” the answer we kept getting was essentially, “it depends on so many things I could not tell you.”  Dave Smith of Mediasmith was kind enough to enumerate the 17 factors that influence the cost of a media plan. So, to move forward we constrained the inquiry to a specific scenario of a $500,000 media budget buying guaranteed online display inventory on 10 websites with 10 placements each.

The second big challenge we faced was in calculating and presenting the the findings. Just knowing the bottom line cost does not provide much insight. Knowing what drives the cost is where the insights begin. So, we developed a Digital Media Planning Workflow Calculator which is an activity-based costing model.  We refined this model throughout the process and plugged in the data we gathered from digital media planning experts through our interviews.

Finally, we crunched the numbers.

The answer? It costs $40,356 to create and execute a media plan under the $500k scenario.  This works out to about 8% of media spend.

8% of media spend is much lower than Google’s number of 28%. However, I believe their study covered additional activities such as advertiser, creative, and publisher activities while ours was limited to media activities within the agency.  The 8% seems to be “in the ballpark, but a little low” as we validated the findings.  A rule of thumb is 10-12% of media spend varying by media spend.

Where does all that money go? We dissected the process by task and by job function and identified the hot spots.  It’s important to know which job functions are performing the tasks because the costs of job functions vary widely (e.g. Media Director versus Ad Trafficker). The reporting phase is the most time-intensive at 113 hours but the strategy phase is the most cost-intensive at $11,454.55 because of the personnel involved.

There is a tremendous amount of manual labor involved in the process of creating and executing a media plan. We counted 482.5 hours per campaign involving 11 different job functions at an agency. That’s a lot of work and people involved!

To get the detailed analysis supporting the result (or to run your own numbers), download the Digital Media Planning Workflow calculator – it’s free and easy to manipulate in Excel.

First, if you have been following recent NextMark posts, you know we are working on building a database of digital advertising programs along with new apps to improve the digital media planning process.  With the 7.12 release, we are introducing the foundation to enable us to offer multiple applications within a single framework.  While is doesn’t look like much, we’ve added a stripe (see image below) across the top of the application that will eventually be an application switcher.  For now, NextMark users will see an app called Direct Marketing System—which is the name for the current set of capabilities offered under the NextMark brand.

NextMark Application with Stripe

So, what new apps are in the works?  The Digital Media Planner will significantly reduce the amount of time required to create high-quality media plans.  It will also provide access to a growing database of detailed digital advertising programs.  We are also working on Media Magnet, a tool to connect buyers to the digital advertising programs that best match their campaign objectives.

With every release, we aim to increase system stability and usability and 7.12 is no exception.  We’ve addressed more than 20 issues reported by our user community.

One of our ongoing goals at Nextmark is to drive down the transaction costs associated with buying and selling direct mail lists and other marketing programs.  In 7.12, we streamlined some of the key functions related to the Direct Marketing Exchange (DMAX)—a system that provides the ability for trading partners to electronically transmit mailing list orders using a standard protocol.  For more information about DMAX and how organizations can use it to reduce cost and increase business, refer to this post.

For more detail, check out the 7.12 release notes.

1) That “50″ number is already old news; more than 100 publishers are now on board. In the past month alone, another 50+ web publishers have signed on, bringing the count to 107.

2) More than 1,000 website advertising programs from these web publishers are now represented as “data cards” in our advertising program database. In fact, as of today 1,414 data cards have been published:

At the current rate, more than 2,500 of the top website advertising programs will be indexed and available by the end of the year.

Unlike in other media channels, digital media planners have never had a “go to” source of comprehensive information about digital advertising programs. They’ve used myriad tools and countless hours of drudgery to cobble together the information they need to present a professional media plan to their client, the advertiser.

Sure, media planners have long had good tools like comScore and Nielsen to get site metrics such as visitors, page views, and audience profiles. However, site metrics only provide a fraction of the information needed to produce a solid media plan.  Furthermore, site metrics tools are typically disconnected from the media planning system.

As a result, media planners waste a great deal of time tracking down the information they need for their media plan. Did you know that it takes more than 480 hours and costs an agency more than $40,000 to create and execute a media plan? Ouch.

With access to a data card database, a digital media planner gains access to all the information they need to make decisions and to create their media plan. Their life just got a lot better: no more late nights tracking down publisher details and pasting into other systems like Excel and Powerpoint. It’s all available at their fingertips in their media planning system. Now, they can spend more time on publisher relations, strategy, and other high-value activities.

Ad sales representatives from web publishers also gain an advantage by publishing data cards.  By making it easy for the media planner to buy from them, they get an increase in sales leads… and those leads are better qualified. So, they waste less time servicing cold leads and more time closing deals.

A prerequisite to a viable data card database is creating data cards for each and every advertising program. Nobody has ever done this before for digital ad programs. This is a monumental task requiring thousands of phone calls, tons of research, and many person-years of data entry. Basically, it means scaling up the research from a few sites on a single media plan to the tens of thousands of sites that sell guaranteed inventory on all media plans. And, because the market is in constant flux, this sisyphean work never ends.

NextMark is up for this challenge. We’ve done this before. We’ve published and maintain more than 110,000 data cards for other media channels. We are now taking a page out of our playbook and adapting our technology and methods to digital media channels: online display, mobile display, and online video.

We’re just getting started, but this early progress is a good indication of the value that data cards bring to both media planners and publishers.

Congratulations to our friends and neighbors at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business for being named the #1 business school in the world by The Economist.

Although our sample size is not as big as The Economist’s, I can say first hand that the “Tuckies” certainly deserve this recognition. The interns we’ve hired have all contributed at the executive level on day one.  This past summer Brian Ramirez has helped us to craft our strategic plan to serve digital agencies and made a powerful presentation to our board of directors.

I’m constantly impressed with how clever and hard-working they are. I’ve encountered hundreds of students over the past ten years through Scott Neslin‘s Database Marketing course. In that class, they use our media planning tools to solve cases.  It’s amazing to me how quickly they learn the basics and the nuances of the business. The media plans they develop will rival any pro’s.

To those of you in the business right now, you should either step up your game or hire them because here they come!

Data cards are basically a “media kit on steroids.”  It’s a fresh concept for digital media adapted from a proven method in offline media. It’s a better way to connect with media planners: data cards make it easy for them to discover your media programs and to include them in their media plans.

Don’t miss your chance to gain a first mover advantage… learn more on the data card publisher page.

“We noticed that the majority of our industry is comprised of Past and Future thinkers. There were barely any Present thinkers. The skews were dramatic. To put this into some context, it is Future thinking that drives innovation, the launch of new companies, creativity, sales, and coming up with the “big ideas”. Past thinking drives validation and most likely comprised of our industry’s research and analytics. However, it is the Present thinking that excels at client services, account/project management, strategic planning, operations, systems integration, time management, privacy/data management, process, work flow, budgeting, scope of work, etc. Most of the problems our industry is encountering is due to lack of the right Present thinking attacking these needs.”

The MindTime Framework reveals that present thinkers are good at getting things done. They organize their time and work towards a goal. According to a recent survey, CMOs rate “ability to execute” as their #1 criteria for choosing an outside agency. It’s clear that present thinking people are critical to an agency’s success.

“Long live the Excel spreadsheet as the tool of choice. We speak anecdotally among industry circles and in class about our seemingly lifelong relationship with manual approaches and tools – and with Excel. We have a love-hate relationship with Excel. It turns out that the stats bear this out. But, we are still more manual and Excel-jockeying than we should be, if we want to scale our efforts.”

She cites research by Efficient Frontier that reveals:

“When asked which tools they used to manage both programs together, US marketers most commonly said spreadsheets (59%)—seemingly favoring a simple, and most likely inadequate campaign management solution over more advanced tools…. That’s not to say that marketers aren’t also relying on some form of analytics or management tool in combination: 48% used a marketing analytics tool, 40% used web analytics tools and about a third of marketers relied on either a third-party ad server, business intelligence platform or their own proprietary internal tool.”

Our own research confirms the widespread use of Excel as the “glue” that holds together the process of creating and executing a media plan. There are many tools used throughout the process that provide sources of data, but the media team turns to Excel bring it all together.

Excel is excellent at providing a flexible and easy to use tool for gathering, organizing, and presenting data. However, it has at least two major drawbacks:

1. Excel has no media-specific features.  It doesn’t know what a campaign, placement, impression, or click from any other cell on a spreadsheet.  As such, you have to work harder to set up and populate the spreadsheet.
2. Excel is terrible at storing and re-mixing data.  Sure, you can save your campaign results spreadsheet on your shared drive.  But if you want to know the results for a client over the past two years and that is stored in 50 different spreadsheets, you’ve got a problem.

With our next generation digital media planning tool, we’ve taken on the challenge of building “Excel on steroids.” We want to take the best parts of Excel and extend that with media-specific capabilities that only a database-backed system can provide.

Is the RFP process broken?  Times have changed since it was built for the Mad Men Era: budgets are smaller and cycle times are quicker. It seems a new approach is required for the digital age.

If you are a list or data compiler and would like assistance with this kind of integration, let us know and we’ll work with you to get connected.

The DataWidget