News

'Always Above The Fold': Audio Joins The RTB Ranks

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:20:00 GMT

As programmatic media buying extends its reach beyond display and into video and perhaps eventually to TV, John Rosso, president, market development, Triton Digital, is hoping that agencies will look at their trading desk dashboards and realize that they could be bidding on audio ads, too. “This is the first audio ad exchange, a supply-side platform for audio, that can plug into programmatic audience buying and real-time bidding,” he says. But unlike some RTB display ads, an audio insert is never missed. “The beauty of audio is that it is always above the fold. An audio ad replaces content. It is native, interruptive and always audible.”

Triton already has a deal with Xaxis to appear on their trading desk, and it brings the company’s long-standing connections with online radio broadcasting to the table. It has provided software as a service tool to radio and TV companies for years, including loyalty programs, metrics and the infrastructure for Internet radio. But now it is taking those connections and bringing 40 million uniques listening to online radio into the RTB universe. Publishers like CBS, Cumulus and Townsquare already have inventory in the system.

Rosso says that in one sense RTB in audio is no different from display. “When you tune in or launch the player the first thing we do is a cookie match to see what we know about you. We set and read cookies in the player as you would in any browser for behavioral targeting or retargeting of an audio ad. It is the same process.” The buyer can pull in third-party data or also layer in Triton’s first-party data about the nature of the content being played. The buyer can target not only a specific audience but also a listening context such as classic rock or top 40.

The technical trick comes in the audio insertion process and making that seamless across many formats and listening conditions. While fades to black are a traditional signal in TV and video for transitions to commercials, dead zones in audio are heard as jarring to listeners, so an audio RTB system has to ensure seamless moves from content to ad. Triton’s RTB platform, dubbed “a2x” puts up a bid request and pre-caches audio ads when the stream is loaded so that it has the ads ready for breaks, which are not always predictable.

Rosso says that it would be hard to categorize the inventory that streaming media companies are putting into the system as “remnant.” “Not based on how it is priced,” he says. “When you add targeting and the cost of data it can be more expensive than the un-targeted directly sold stuff.” He says that RTB is giving audio advertisers targeting capabilities they never had in over-air or online radio before, and the post-exposure cookie tracking can give them new levels of attribution precision.

It also brings new advertisers to the medium. Publishers choose to dedicate a percentage of available spots to the exchange, from 10% to 100%, and Rosso says he sees a typical pricing floor of $8 CPMs, which compare favorably to typical spot radio CPMs of $12 and up.

One of the most intriguing possibilities attached to audio RTB is creative. Rosso believes there is great potential for retargeting listeners with sequences of audio spots. Since audio breaks are more likely being heard than display ads are predictably being seen, an advertiser could retarget a listener with episodic ads. “Once I know you have heard one ad, I can serve you the next episode,” he says. “The technology exists. We haven’t done it yet, but it isn’t hard to connect the dots.”

Harder dots to connect will be the mobile piece. Rosso admits that tracking and targeting just are not up to snuff on devices yet, even though about 40% of the listening he sees on the platforms are already on mobile. But he sees audio RTB to devices as a clear monetization path for publishers because it is less disruptive and more bandwidth-friendly than mobile video. “We think audio ads are just the right size and shape.”

Old Media, New Tricks

Mon, 06 May 2013 17:45:00 GMT

Radio and Outdoor Companies Turn to Online Auction System to Sell Digital Ads

Buying ad space on the video screens inside the Clark/Lake train station in Chicago typically involves making half a dozen phone calls and exchanging several emails or faxes with the firm that owns the screens.

Now, advertisers can accomplish the same task with a few clicks of a computer mouse, thanks to a new auction system for buying digital out-of-home ads.

Such automated auctions already are used for Web display ads, but "programmatic buying," as it is called, is now attracting the attention of the digital arms of old media such as outdoor and radio. With programmatic buying, which can often be done in real time, advertisers can log on to a website and select where they want ads to run, how long the campaign is to appear and their maximum bid for the space. With another click the technology begins bidding on ad space that matches the request.

The outdoor-ad auction system is run by Vistar Media, which launched the exchange in January.

Vistar is busy forging relationships with companies that operate digital screens in stores, malls, elevators and other public venues. Among them is Titan LLC, a closely held New York outdoor-ad company that owns video screens in Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago (including the ones in the Clark/ Lake station). Titan is using Vistar's exchange to sell ad space on about 500 of its 1,700 video screens, with more screens coming online later in the year.

Vistar is also working with Adspace Network, a New York company that operates 3,000 screens in 206 malls in the U.S.

So far about a dozen advertisers have used Vistar to buy ad space, says Jeremy Ozen, a co-founder of Vistar, which was founded by former executives of Invite Media. Invite Media was acquired by Google Inc. in 2010. Vistar backers include Valhalla Partners and Advancit Capital, the investment firm co-owned by Shari Redstone. Advertisers include Zurich Insurance Group, Zurich confirms.For advertisers, the technology takes a lot of the legwork out of buying ad space, particularly across screens owned by multiple firms, said Mike Finnegan, director of product development at Xaxis, an online media-buying platform owned by WPP PLC.

For Titan, making its inventory available through an exchange allows it to reach ad buyers who control digital budgets in addition to buyers confined to outdoor, said Dave Etherington, Titan's executive vice president of marketing. Digital is a bigger pool of revenue: spending on Internet ads is expected to jump almost 18% this year to $36.2 billion while ad expenditures on outdoor ads is expected to rise about 5% to $7.9 billion, according to ZenithOptimedia, a unit of Publicis Groupe S.A.

Bigger outdoor ad companies are beginning to take note. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc., one of the biggest outdoor companies in the world, has had some exploratory conversations about the use of programmatic buying, according to a person familiar with the matter. "We are always looking for ways to make it simpler to put together an out-of-home campaign," said William Eccleshare, the company's chief executive officer.

Radio is also tuning in. Triton Digital, a Los Angeles-based company, has recently built an ad exchange that allows advertisers to automate the buying of online and mobile-audio radio ads. Its sells some inventory for media companies such as CBS Radio, which streams content on the Web from many of their local stations.

Triton said it has already run ad campaign for a "handful" of advertisers but it declined to provide specific names.

Eventually, automated ad sales could bring down the price of ads, as an auction system lets bidders set their price. Programmatic buying has brought down prices in the ad market for online display ad, but there is a glut of available space there. The world of digital outdoor ads is finite, unlike online ads. Moreover, companies such as Titan are including rules on the exchange, which will block any bids that fall below a certain price.

Dennis Roche, president of Access Sports Media, which operates screens hanging in the concourse of 47 professional sports arenas, said he is willing to risk some pricing erosion to get more dollars from ad categories that wouldn't necessarily buy space on his firm's screens.

"I am focused on dollar share in the beginning, not" pricing, said Mr. Roche, whose firm recently began working with Vistar.

Some brand marketers such as Unilever and Kellogg Co. are beginning to embrace real-time bidding for some of their display ad buys while others such as Reckitt Benckiser are using it for online video.

Real-time bidding for online display is more efficient from a pricing standpoint, said Bob Arnold, Kellogg's associate director of digital strategy.

The outdoor ad business doesn't offer the same type of audience-targeting capabilities as online display. But WPP's Spafax Networks has developed a system that works with Vistar, offering advertisers some ability to target specific categories of consumers. It uses survey data and other research information to figure out when certain demographic groups, such as business travelers, might pass by a particular screen—such as at an airport, in a cab, or in an elevator—during the course of their day, says Patrick Bonomo, Spafax's chief operating officer. With that information, the agency can select specific venues such as a train station in specific ZIP codes to reach those travelers at multiple places.

Still, advertisers have concerns about automated ad exchanges, including how certain they are about where their ads are appearing. Bigger and more elaborate ad deals—like home page takeovers or sponsorship—will still involve lots of back and forth between human sales forces.

"We won't have to worry about robots replacing us quite yet," added Titan's Mr. Etherington.

Now RTB Also Stands For Radio Time Bidding

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:50:00 GMT

Programmatic media-buying may be dominated by online display, but it’s starting to gain traction as an efficient -- and effective -- way of trading other media, even some of the most old school options. And there’s nothing more old school on Madison Avenue than radio, right? Not so, according to Triton Digital, the private equity-backed radio tech firm, which has already cut deals with WPP’s Xaxis and CBS to begin trading radio inventory on its a2x programmatic buying platform. Tomorrow it will announce that it has also signed up Entercom Communications too. Okay, so they’ve unofficially announced it here in RTBlog, but scoops aside, the news is important for several reasons. One is that Entercom is one of the largest operators of radio stations (more than 100) in the country, with representation in 23 markets, including San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, etc. And coupled with CBS, it will give media buyers and trading desks some real scale to work with.

The deal is interesting for another reason, the Xaxis connection. Xaxis, of course, has been pushing the envelope of programmatic trading into other media, and recently, announced deals with Vistar to begin using its platform to buy out-of-home media. As is the cases with out-of-home, the Triton inventory initially will include only digital radio stations, streamed online and to mobile devices, mainly because it’s still not feasible to target and serve ads to discrete users on terrestrial radio. But I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody comes up with a way to do even that soon.

I mean, most of the trading desks I’ve been speaking to say they are close to, or already making TV audience buys via some form of RTB, so can terrestrial radio be far behind?

Pandora Teams With Strata, Mediaocean To Simplify Ad-Buying

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Online radio service Pandora confirmed Tuesday that it will integrate its audience data into the Strata and Mediaocean media-buying platforms. The move will allow advertisers to compare Pandora’s audience ratings side-by-side with terrestrial radio stations nationwide.

That in turn could bolster Pandora’s ad sales by making it easier for agencies and marketers to plan, buy and process digital radio advertising. Until now, radio ad buyers using Strata and Mediaocean had to manually research Pandora’s audience data.

The two ad systems will now import Pandora’s local and national ratings information from Triton Digital into their software platforms. Without mentioning Strata or Mediaocean specifically, Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy discussed how the integrations would benefit the company, while speaking last month at an industry conference.

“One -- it makes it immediately evident, in comparable terms, the size of the Pandora audience opportunity that we can bring to an advertiser, and second -- it makes Pandora as easy to buy as those FM stations,” he said.

Kennedy added that the company’s sales force would still have to work closely with each client, “but it is a fundamental enabler for our further entry into the radio ad markets.”

Pandora reported having an 8.03% share of the total U.S. listening audience in January, up from 5.55% in the year-earlier period. Active listeners reached 65.6 million, up 38% from 47.6 million a year ago. And listener hours were 1.39 billion, a 47% increase from 952 million.

For its third quarter ended Oct. 31, the company posted a profit of $2.1 million -- or a penny a share -- up from $638,000, or break-even, a year ago. Revenue increased 60% to $120. But Pandora in December saw its share price fall steeply when it warned of slower revenue growth in its fourth quarter, ending Jan. 31. It reports Q4 earnings on Thursday.

Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise suggested the alliance with Pandora would release pent-up demand from buyers. “Mediaocean’s clients -- the major holding companies and independents in North America and Europe who use our systems to manage over $100 billion in media spend a year -- have long expressed a desire to spend far more heavily in digital radio generally, and Pandora specifically,” he said in a statement.

Mediacocean was formed last year through the merger of Donovan Data Systems and MediaBank. Pandora said the Strata integration was completed in January, while that with Mediaocean is currently in beta testing, with the full-scale rollout scheduled for the end of April.

Is there a Business Model for Streaming?

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:00:00 GMT

Mike Agovino is COO of Triton Digital, the company at the leading edge of audio’s digital transformation and monetization. The digital audio space is changing fast, as is its relationship to advertisers. And nobody is closer to the action than Triton. So what’s new? And what does that mean for broadcasters in particular?

This is the last of a two-part conversation. In Part 1 yesterday, we focused on what’s new in the digital audio monetization space and what that means for broadcasters in particular. In this part, we focus on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of simulcasting ads between over-the-air and online and whether or not there really is a business model for online radio.

I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot of chatter in the radio industry about the notion of simulcasting ads between over-the-air and online so as to roll them up into one Arbitron number. My first question is, from your perspective and based on your research, is this even possible given existing AFTRA rules? Then, how much sense does that make in the context of these new announcements we have discussed?

There’s a set of union rules that remain in place, nothing has changed. I think on an agency-by-agency basis, most agencies are not paying “move-over” rights for union members that have produced the ads. I think it is worth noting for the broadcasters who are simulcasting that unless they have a clear understanding that the agency has paid those move-over rights, they’re really operating outside of the union rules and that’s going to be problematic at some point. While ultimately it’s up to the agency to police things, and I doubt many will, I wouldn’t want to be the guy responsible for dragging a big agency into a union dispute. Just sayin’!

I’ve had some conversations with agency friends on the “move-over” issue and most I talk to see it as a pretty moot point. They don’t believe 60 or 30 second “flat” creative produced for radio is ripe for repurposing to digital audio. They preach the virtues of shorter 10-30 second creative units that leverage the interactivity and social capabilities of digital. Most assume radio companies know they can’t simulcast these ads. It seems like a pretty large disconnect to me.

Having said that, it’s 2013 and about time we all got past this stuff. We are focused on opening up all potential revenue streams so whether it’s local, regional, agency, ad exchange, third party ad network, local aggregation, local DIY or self-serve, all of these channels are available for publishers to optimize their digital audio inventory. With this in full swing nobody is going to want to simulcast for the hope of catching some stray panelist who loves to listen online. Not even the traditional buy side is going to buy this inventory that way.

My experience thus far has been that most of the stations that have explored a simulcast were primarily driven by the fact that their digital audiences are too small to occupy the mindshare of local staffs. I wouldn’t want a six figure salesperson who brings me $200 over-the-air rates selling fifty in-stream listeners either, but I know enough about the existing and trending technology to know there are better solutions to this problem and I’m confidant the market will discover them soon.

I truly believe we will be at a point within the next eighteen months where an online listener is worth more to broadcasters than an estimated over-the-air listener. Broadcasters are going to want and need to actually migrate listenership and want to drive overall digital listenership. They’re going to see this as a primary pathway to a profitable future business model.

The statistics are undeniable – an audience migration is underway. It’s being powered by the proliferation of smart mobile technology, and nothing is going to get in the way of that. Strategies deployed in defense of the status quo will prove futile.

Currently the greatest traction exists on the pure-play side, most notably with Pandora, but with others as well. The broadcast side is going to want to have that audience and need to have that audience and not want to see them leave. The value of a listener on the digital side is only going to increase.

Offline media in total have lost 15 share points to digital over the last five years. While newspapers have taken the brunt of this, radio has lost share as well. Advertising strategy and media decisions are increasingly being put in the hands of digital natives. The average CMO tenure is less than 2 years and these positions have evolved to be like playing Moneyball with marketing dollars. An estimate based upon a very small sample that turns five-plus minutes into a proxy for an ad impression and an affidavit from your traffic system as accountability are unlikely to satisfy these types for much longer.

At Triton Digital we are focused on delivering the innovation that lights up new channels and allows publishers to get the highest possible price for every available impression. As the audience is valued more and more by advertisers, the desire to build audience will increase on the publisher side. I think that’s when the publishers will desire more innovation around what they are doing and how they are delivering things. It’s a story for another day but we are investing heavily in the digital pieces that propel engagement levels and time spent as well because we know there will soon come a day when you’ll want to compete for audience.

Mike, some broadcasters will tell me that their advertisers say they want “total audience measurement.” They want all their metrics to appear in one place from one provider. This idea presumes simulcasting. But is that true? You have direct contact with these advertisers. What are they telling you that they want? Is it “total audience measurement?”

Everybody will interpret differently what they hear, but what we have heard loud and clear is that advertisers want a full view of the audio landscape, not that they want one provider and certainly not that they have identified that provider.

If you’re talking about someone from the traditional audio buying side of an agency, what is important to them is that they continue to establish themselves as the experts in the audio channel – that they remain indispensable within the agency as the audio expert. And so they want to have a view of the entire market. I don’t find a bias toward “estimates” – the type of data available from Arbitron. I find the actual bias is toward the GRP. Buyers simply want to be able to put digital and offline in a similar metric bucket so they can pull from both sides within one budget. This is no different from what is happening with the collision of TV and online video. The GRP is being adapted to let digital fit into a more traditional workflow, but that doesn’t mean the decision maker wants the primitive measurement form.

If there is a bias in how to measure, the bias is towards “census” – actual tracking of connections between consumers and publishers that can be expressed as ratings or GRP’s. And that is the kind of data that Triton provides.

Advertisers also tell us they want those metrics to reside in the systems they utilize every day to do their jobs to plan and buy advertising. We have listened and have focused on integrating our data into those systems and preparing our data for that integration. We have successfully done that with the primary players in that space. We have said on numerous occasions publicly and privately to publishers, we would be happy to feed your MRC-accredited webcast metrics data to third parties, whether it be stewardship systems that agencies utilize or Arbitron or any other third party. This method would deliver what you are talking about at scale quickly if publishers support it.

We are working hard to enable this commerce and help make the market flow for the publishers participating in it. As the technology opens up all these channels it enables competition for the right to message your audience, that will drive greater value and publishers are going to want to do that.

This past week Lew Dickey, Cumulus CEO and one of your larger clients, told Bloomberg that there was no business model for streaming. What’s your take on that?

Actually, I think what Lew was saying ties into everything I have been saying during this discussion.

He’s right, there has not been a viable business model for streaming up until now unless you are a spoken word publisher like ESPN or have lots of spoken word stations like CBS. The combination of music performance royalties on the expense side and low CPM’s on the monetization side have led Lew and others to this conclusion.

Triton’s focus is looking forward, and the consumer is not concerned with the complexities of publisher business models. They just want to engage when, where, and how they want to engage. The audience stats are overwhelming and so certain things are going to have to “give” inside the ecosystem.

Technology solves lots of problems and we believe the monetization challenge will dissipate over time and that these content acquisition costs will somehow be rationalized and the market will find its equilibrium.

We believe these are “when” not “if” questions, and the “when” on audience value is kicking in right now.

The Game-Changing Revenue Opportunities for Online Radio

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:50:00 GMT

This is the first of a two-part conversation. Today, we focus on what’s new in the digital audio monetization space and what that means for broadcasters in particular. Tomorrow, we focus on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of simulcasting ads between over-the-air and online and whether or not there really is a business model for online radio.

Mike, bring us up to date on what’s new in the internet audio space and what that means for publishers.

This might not be new but it is important to note, we continue to see impressive audience growth with overall listening up nearly 50% in 2012 as measured by our MRC accredited Webcast Metrics service. We recently eclipsed the 2.5 million Average Active Sessions number during the average week and are witnessing peak listening times with audience numbers nearing 4 million. The overall reach of online audio continues to grow as well with more than 100 million people listening at some point each month.

Advertisers follow audiences and with this kind of audience growth more and more advertisers have been entering the space for the first time and still more are upping their year over year spends as they become more familiar with the space and its benefits. Early 2012 saw smartphone penetration in the US surpass feature phone penetration and tablets now outsell PC’s, these sweeping changes in the consumer market have had a dramatic impact on the size of digital audio audiences overall.

At Triton we have kept a laser focus on providing innovation that will activate the market by proving that a connected one-to-one listener has great value. We can’t do much to affect overall content costs today but we have done a lot to magnify the value of a listener.

Can you give me some examples of what you are talking about?

Triton is investing millions each year in R&D to build the digital audio advertising market. We believe deep down to our toes that we are witnessing a historical migration to digital for all forms of content and take it as our responsibility to provide publishers with the technology they need to build big audience and big monetization of that audience.

Recently, we have released two products that were a long time in the making at great expense but we believe are nothing less than game-changing for the space. These new products are called CM3 and a2x.

CM3 is an advertising system and decision engine built inside of our network that allows publishers to deliver both content and advertising on a one-to-one basis. At the same time, CM3 also allows publishers to conduct business in a variety of models from traditional spot, to digital “slotted” impressions based digital or dynamic real time. CM3 opens your available audience to be monetized through a variety of sales channels and business models while managing it all seamlessly in the backend.

So if you are a radio station and you want to sell your in-stream inventory in a bundled sell with on-air CM3 allows you to do that, but it also opens up your remaining inventory for sell-in from any number of third party channels. CM3 brings the capabilities of digital display advertising to the audio market. CM3 enables the targeting of ads and other content through a combination of first and third party data allowing publishers to unlock real digital value.

CM3 is not a new version of an old product – it’s a new product built from the ground up and deployed inside our infrastructure. Earlier technology from Ando Media and others focused primarily on solving a problem caused by union rules and the need for the separation of breaks. CM3 solves a different problem…revenue!

We’ve always believed that digital audio ads would have the same potential as other digital ad units and that when this power was delivered at scale audio would become a big digital business. We believe that day is upon us!

Triton also recently announced a new product we call a2x. It’s the first audience-based programmatic buying solution for online audio. It’s a private exchange for digital audio advertising. Triton publishing partners can now make their inventory available for real-time purchase through demand side platforms and agency trading desks. Agencies are already buying digital display and video through these platforms and now for the first time they can also use them to buy digital audio.

Triton’s announcement was followed by a release from WPP/GroupM’s trading desk, Xaxis. Xaxis has partnered with Triton Digital to power what they’re calling “Xaxis Radio,” which is a product to purchase programmatic real-time digital audio advertising. Xaxis connects into Triton’s technology allowing them to purchase distinct audience segments combining demographic and psychographic data with purchase intent across our network of publishers. The agency is now able to segment audiences across various data points that are relevant to different advertisers.

And since Xaxis is part of the largest buyer of advertising on the planet, I think it makes a pretty strong statement about the potential for digital audio advertising. This isn’t a beta with some small advertiser; it’s a partnership with the largest agency in the world.

So for the first time an advertiser will be able to buy spots not only based on where the listener is but across numerous other data fields like their activities or areas of interest?

Kinda…they are buying audience not spots.

The advertiser is not looking to buy the audience of a particular station or publisher; they are looking to buy audience that fits into a particular segment across a large network of publishers. The buyer is actually “blind” as to where the impression is delivered from a publisher standpoint. The audience is anonymous but we can infer a lot about them by appending various data sources to what we already know so that the right ad gets delivered to the right person at the right time as well as on the right device and in the right context.

So this doesn’t require any extra work or effort from the publisher? You don’t need to add new filters. You don’t need to add registration. All of this is based on data that already exists, right?

Almost.

It basically requires a “yes” from the publisher if they are already a Triton streaming client. After that its a minimum amount of work on our side to get them activated.

Other than that, another important component is that it’s real-time. Most of the advertising that people are selling in the digital audio space is slotted advertising where somebody is buying a campaign in December but it is running in January and is locked in. This channel allows for the monetization of an impression that was unsold and therfore is available in real-time. What we’ve seen with digital audio, especially with the broadcast publishers, is a significant struggle to sell through against all their available impressions and to have strong monetization of those impressions from a CPM standpoint. This helps on both sides of that equation. It also helps minimize the number of PSA’s and poor sounding direct response ads running in-stream.

So what do you expect that impact to be? How positively will these new tools impact the ability of publishers or broadcasters to monetize these streams?

The potential for audio is huge. RTB [real-time bidding] was 17% of the display market in 2012 and we believe as do our demand side partners that audio is a superior opportunity. Digital audio is premium above-the-fold inventory. We’re not talking about 10 ads on a web page you never look at, we’re talking about a native, interruptive and unavoidable delivery of an impression.

Audio has always been mobile; think of radio’s historical in-car listening numbers, and advertisers have always valued the mobile context. The idea that mobile is about a device type never made any sense to us; mobile is a context and no other ad form can translate that value the way audio can!

We spent a lot of time in the market validating our thesis. Our time spent with demand side players, agency leaders and ad technology experts confirmed our belief about the high value of digital audio inventory.

I want to stress that this is an invitation-only, premium, private exchange. Quality publishers with quality inventory – and the advertisers know that going in.

With the introduction of CM3 comes a host of other opportunities as well. We have the ability to integrate third parties so that ad networks, ad servers, local aggregators etc can hook into a marketplace. While nearly all publishers lack the individual scale to provide a viable local model today a combination/partnership of publishers at a local level can offer this scale. As the space scales further the hyper-local and mobile targeting opportunities will kick in.

As I mentioned earlier, our R&D focus is heavily weighted toward monetization builders. For us this has all been about helping our publishers get real value for their inventory and helping them to deliver more audience online. We can now see a path to monetization levels that exceed what an estimated over-the-air listener is worth.

Do you expect these announcements, these tools, to help even the playing field between traditional broadcast publishers and the Pandoras of the world?

I think for the broadcast guys this will be the channel that delivers the most value right now.

They have had significant challenges with the various aggregation plays or ad networks that they participate in, and that includes Triton. The limitations of the early tech pushed these companies toward the low-hanging fruit of established radio budgets. Therefore, it has primarily been network radio advertisers who have sought out this channel and so the CPM’s have been very poor.

Pure-play publishers have significantly more audience data, registration data, etc.. They have utilized that data to drive higher CPM for their various inventories. So I think from an impression value standpoint, it certainly helps level the playing field.

I do, however, still believe its very important for all publishers to capture registration data. This is a point that has always bewildered me with the broadcasters. Since they have not been so concerned about audience size online why wouldn’t they force a registration? I mean, if you think it’s challenging to monetize and therefore aren’t trying to maximize overall audience size, why would you be concerned about putting up a registration gate?

Is your focus leveling the playing field for broadcasters? Do you come at all of this from the broadcaster’s perspective?

Our market is digital audio. Triton serves any and all publishers in the digital audio space and we do so without prejudice. Any publisher, whether live or on-demand, broadcaster or pure play, may license any product we build. Where I came from will always matter to me, but our company cannot have credibility in the market without truly being agnostic.

Agencies and advertisers, those that create demand, do not see a distinction between publisher based upon their legacy. They have been crystal clear with our company as to what they want and expect. Our mission is to deliver to publishers, regardless of who they are and where they come from, the digital audio capabilities necessary to build audience and harness revenue.

The notion that Spotify, Pandora or any on-demand service is the “enemy” of “radio” makes no sense. Technologies like these prove that audio can and will evolve and with it so will audio advertising. Audio must evolve!

Did FM prove to be the “enemy” or a “friend” back in the 1960′s? The revenue that has left the broadcast radio industry since 2006 has disproportionately gone to Google and Facebook, not to Spotify and Pandora! I would actually argue that these kinds of services are helping to protect audio’s place in the advertising ecosystem as they give marketers a reason to believe audio will evolve to become more targeted and accountable – this is a critical point.

Whether a product is or isn’t “radio” doesn’t matter any more than whether a product is or isn’t “newspaper” or is or isn’t “TV.” Marketers are following the consumer and the consumer is blending their time between offline and online media with a constant uptick towards online. Ad budgets will continue to slant in the online direction as audience builds and they make better use of available data and precision targeting capability.

Back to a2x, how have broadcast publishers been responding to these recent announcements?

The response from our broadcast publishers has been tremendous. We haven’t been loud in the marketplace about that yet. The goal is to light up as many of the trading desks as we can, and we’ve had several more come on in the past few weeks since the Xaxis announcement.

With more trading desks comes more demand for inventory and with that demand comes higher prices paid to deliver the impression.

In Part 2 tomorrow, we focus on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of simulcasting ads between over-the-air and online and whether or not there really is a business model for online radio.

Digital Radio Gets Real-Time With Xaxis: Trading desk partners with Triton Digital

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:20:00 GMT

While no medium is totally efficient, digital radio advertising can be particularly wasteful. For example, someone in New York may listen to a Los Angeles sports radio station’s online stream to keep up on the Southern California sports scene, but that person isn’t going to care about some local LA car dealership’s upcoming sale or a new bar that the radio host claims is the best spot in SoCal to watch the Lakers play.

That sort of problem is easily solved in teh word of display advertising, where contextual targeting has in many cases given way to real-time bidding, or the ability to buy ads on the fly that are targeted to a specific type of user. Now RTB is coming to digital radio courtesy of WPP-owned agency trading desk Xaxis.

Through a partnership with Triton Digital—which provides digital services and applications to radio companies, handling more than 2 billion online and mobile audio impressions per month—Xaxis Radio advertisers will be able to target the New Yorker listening to LA sports radio online with ads for the best Big Apple bar to catch a Lakers game. Triton Digital has access to digital audio inventory from publishers like Pandora, Cox Communications, NPR, ESPN Radio and Slacker Radio, though not all publishers are yet on board for RTB advertising.

"There’s tremendous benefit to broadcasters in being able to target advertising through RTB that was previously mistargeted," said Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser. “They realize that big national advertisers are going to be attracted to extending their audience buys.”

Last week Triton Digital had announced a deal with data platform eXelate to that will see data around consumers’ purchase intent, household demos and behavior blended into Triton’s ad platform for ad targeting. Xaxis will be able to use that data in addition to the data housed in its own data management platform (DMP). Because Xaxis Radio plugs into Xaxis’s DMP, advertisers will able to connect their digital audio buys with their online, social, mobile and video campaigns to measure performance across channels.

"We can see how [the digital audio campaign] impacts the rest of the media plan. [For example] we can say that if one user hears two radio ads, they are now X percent more likely to recall the brand, instead of inferring that the dots are connected," said Mike Finnegan, product manager for Xaxis Radio.

While RTB is generally considered the domain of direct-response advertisers, Lesser said that digital radio advertising is more upper-funnel (more like online video ads) but with the targeting precision of online display ads. Xaxis began testing Xaxis Radio two weeks ago with two clients, each of whom was looking to target 18-to-24 year-olds (Lesser said that digital audio skews toward younger users). One advertiser was looking to promote a product launch to raise awareness via branded display and radio by calculating online GRPs. The other ran an awareness play as well but also wanted to be able to attribute the campaign to see if they’re actually hitting the right audiences.

Online radio will start serving ads based on your web browsing

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:25:00 GMT

Websites show you ads based on other sites you visited. Now, online radio stations will start playing you songs based on the same information. This could spike growth in the radio ad industry and mean it won’t be weird to hear a tofu ad after a country song.

Picture yourself sitting in Cleveland and using the internet to explore places to visit in France. Later, you pull up online radio service Pandora on your web browser to listen to Motown songs and what do you hear? Ads promoting cheap flights to Paris.

While marketers have long targeted online radio listeners baed on their zip code or gender, this type of interest-based targeting is new. The ad options, which are the result of a deal between radio service Triton Digital and data provider eXelate, mean radio ads are about to get a lot more specific.

According to Triton Digital COO, Mike Agovino, radio ads represent a $17 billion industry but one that relies on out-dated metrics and that offers little accountability to ad buyers. He thinks that letting brands sell to listeners based on their web surfing habits will drive a new wave of automated ad buying and increase the value of the radio ad market.

The possibilities for radio are intriguing. Recall that, in the recent Presidential election, the parties launched a barrage of political ads in swing districts by using Pandora’s ability to play ads based on a person’s zip code. Meanwhile, their neighbors across the street who lived in a different district might have heard ads for trucks or lollipops based depending on their age and gender (Pandora garners this information when you sign up for the service).

Now, radio ad targeting is going to get even more focused. For instance, the new data tools mean Ford might sell pick-ups after a teenybopper song because the company knows a listener was just looking at truck sites. Or Tampex may find occasions to pitch its products in the midst of a heavy-metal marathon.

According to eXelate CEO, Mark Zagorski, radio is the “last bastion of context based advertising” but that this will change quickly due to online radio’s growing popularity and the capacity of behavioral-based advertising to scale quickly.

As with other situations in which marketers use big data techniques to pitch products, there is a creepiness factor here. For instance, do you want marketers to pknow you’ve spent the last two hours researching gonorrhea and play you radio ads accordingly? Zagorski addressed the privacy concerns by saying that eXelate doesn’t touch so-called PPI (private personal information) but simply overlays online activity onto a streaming service.

The new interest-based ads will help brands reach users of Pandora, which makes up about 74% of the online radio market, but also the web streams of more traditional radio stations as well.

Xbox Music’s Ad-Based Revenue Model Takes Shape

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:15:00 GMT

Xbox Music, Microsoft’s streaming music competitor to Spotify and iTunes that began to roll out to Xbox and Windows-powered devices in October, today filled in one part of the picture for how it will make revenues from the free portion of the service. Triton Digital has been appointed to provide audio advertising for it. Triton will also provide audience analytics so that Microsoft can make better sense of what platforms consumers are using and what music they’re consuming.

Triton says that the deal is exclusive to it for the time being and will include access not just to measurement services but to Triton’s ad sales network – it also works with Pandora, Slacker, Clear Channel and CBS among other media streaming companies — and ad insertion technologies. The commercials will come in the form of audio ads that will run in the free streaming service (which sits alongside a paid download service) that will run on Windows 8 and Windows RT devices. Triton says that they will be “highly contextual and appropriate ads to their audience.”

“Digital audio is bursting at the seams and some very big names are joining the competition,” said Mike Agovino, COO at Triton Digital in a statement. Indeed, to help differentiate Xbox Music from all the other companies offering streaming services today — and to ensure that its Windows devices have just as many music options for consumers as the iPhone and Android do — Microsoft is putting a big bet on personalization, with the streams targeted by demographic, geography and past listening history.

Triton will come into play here with data that it will pick up through the service.

Although Microsoft Advertising has made a big push into multimedia and social ads — one look at the new concepts being implemented in Skype gives you a glimpse of what it hopes to do there — its deal with Triton points to one area where Microsoft apparently hasn’t developed capabilities and so has had to look elsewhere to provide them. It’s also a sign, I think, of how Microsoft perhaps is waiting and seeing just how Xbox Music will develop before it invests money into developing those kinds of capabilities in-house for itself.

How Brands Leverage Radio’s Unique Listener Loyalty

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:00:00 GMT

In a time when advertisers are looking to engage with consumers more deeply via social channels, radio is leveraging its legions of fans to remain a vital part of the media mix. National networks and local stations are using this bond to provide brands with ways to reach their listeners that go beyond the 30- or 60-second spot. Instead, they are using the kinship listeners feel for their stations and radio personalities to create content-rich programs that can be shared online and via social and mobile.

Taking advantage of the strong followings stations have with their local audiences is nothing new. It’s long been the central point of differentiation for radio. What’s different today is how they are broadening that value into a multiplatform environment that puts AM/FM broadcast at the center of programs that can also include a station’s website, its Facebook and Twitter feeds, live events and even naming rights.

“Our research shows how insanely pervasive radio is,” says media analyst Alice K. Sylvester, COO of Media Behavior Institute. “People identify with the station and its local identity and they stick with it. It becomes a bit of a badge for them. They become part of a community that shares the enjoyment.”

To expand its presence in its hometown Chicago market, Allstate has gone far beyond simply running its “Mayhem” spots. Instead, it has set itself up to own different parts of local broadcasts, aligning its brand with relevant content. Traffic reports are branded with the “Good Hands” name on local CBS outlets. And the renovated street-level studio for WGN, the flagship Tribune Company station, in September was renamed the Allstate Showcase Studio, a deal that includes on-air naming recognition as well as an interior studio wrap featuring Allstate graphics.

“There’s an emotional tie that comes in when you can make a connection with a DJ. Now we’re able to take that connection and extend it as far as possible,” says Cecilia Bizon, VP, media director at Starcom in Chicago, which handled the Allstate media program.

Radio is using this position to maintain its revenue in the face of greater media competition. Radio’s revenue in 2011 was $17.4 billion, up 1 percent from the previous year, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB). But during that time, RAB notes, the biggest segments of growth were off-air promotions (7 percent higher) and digital revenue (up 15 percent).

“Cross-channel platform capabilities extend radio beyond the traditional AM/FM band,” says Erica Farber, president and CEO of RAB. “Historically, radio would go in with a campaign of 30s and 60s. Now, when you’re sitting with a client, radio has multiple ways to reach. Yes, the audio is strong. But we can let those walls go down and create any program we want.”

“The starting point is you have this fabulous footprint and loyal consumer base,” concurs Sean Creamer, EVP and COO of measurement company Arbitron. “That affinity and loyalty now extends to visiting the website.”

Even in today’s noisy media market, radio has kept its listenership. The latest Arbitron figures show that 93 percent of Americans adults—or 242 million people—listen to radio each week, a number that has remained constant over the past year.

“We have fans, not consumers,” says Tim Murphy, VP of digital strategy and enterprise platforms for Entercom Communications. “They’re not points on a research slide. We swim in an engagement pool no one else has.”

According to Radio Tomorrow, a study based on a poll of 40,000 consumers released last month by Alan Burns & Associates and Triton Digital, consumers have a more personal relationship with radio than with other media. Half (50 percent) said that radio feels like one of their friends, well ahead of the number who said that of TV (31 percent) or a website (26 percent). The study also found that consumers trust radio more than any other medium for information about a product or service. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) indicated that radio ads are “honest and believable”—putting it first in that category.

“The big takeaway is that radio still wins as a medium people find energizes them, relaxes them, puts them in a better mood and helps them have a good time,” says Jen Sullivan, VP of marketing at Triton.

The trust factor allows station personalities to tacitly endorse products through voiced reads. But now stations are able to follow these endorsements through the purchase funnel, says Entercom’s Murphy. He notes, for example, that Boston talk radio host Howie Carr is “proven to move goods and services.” But now, instead of ending at the broadcast message, the station follows up with direct email to its listeners. “We can use the database building we’ve done to extend endorsements,” says Murphy. “We can collect and qualify leads. It makes us an accountable medium.”

For a brand like Six Flags, radio is an essential part of its media mix because even though it has a national presence, it needs to generate local interest to drive people to its 19 amusement parks. James Geiser, VP of marketing and sales, says the company is particularly drawn to radio’s ability to engage consumers via its on-air personalities. “We have to get as much out of it as possible to leverage the strength of the medium,” he notes. “We try to feed content to the stations. That’s a fertile ground for us.”

For example, to promote its Halloween-themed Fright Fest, Six Flags brought local DJs to the parks and recorded them while they were riding on coasters or going through the haunted house. In Dallas, the morning DJ was sent fried cockroaches—people willing to eat them were given free admission to the park—and the pictures were posted to the station’s website. On Power 106 in Los Angeles, a hip-hop station with a particularly strong social media following, on-air contests for Fright Fest tickets require a visit to the station’s website, and promotions are regularly pushed out using its Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.

What these brands recognize—and what radio stations and networks are acknowledging—is that content that can be shared to radio’s loyal listeners can drive the brand conversation. In the current flu season, Walgreens has its pharmacists go into the DJ booth to administer flu shots to hosts on-air. “It goes beyond the ad schedule into content sponsorship,” says Christine Kubisztal, director of media services for the retailer, noting that the goal is to use radio to build a personal relationship with its pharmacists.

Kubisztal adds that, although it is not part of the formal program, these flu stunts get viral coverage. “It extends into other vehicles. They’ll film it and you can watch your favorite DJ get a shot,” she says.

CBS Radio, through its Altitude Group, helped craft the Walgreens program and works with national brands such as Dodge, MasterCard and Bank of America to reach more deeply into CBS’s 28 local markets. “We’re using our stations and we’re multiplexing on mobile, social, iPads and letting it flow,” explains Rich Lobel, EVP of the Altitude Group. “Broadcast is the megaphone, the loudspeaker. It’s the way to get excitement out in a big way.”

For Fiat, CBS and Altitude took a slightly off-center approach to align with the values of the “life is best when driven” tagline used for the relaunch of the auto brand. It created a series of two-minute vignettes featuring storytellers riffing on the theme of what drives them. These were aired in fixed positions on CBS radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Orlando. Additional 15-second tune-in spots drove further engagement.

Each on-air vignette encouraged listeners to visit the Fiat USA Facebook page to view video of the entire story archived on the site. The videos were also placed directly on the stations’ websites. Through video pre-polls, streaming, time-based takeovers and contextually relevant placements, the digital distribution became the long tail of the radio campaign.

“We’re creating content experiences that leverage the assets of broadcast and can continue on other platforms,” says Lobel.

It’s that kind of local reach that brands still believe drives radio’s return. “From a creative side, radio can be magic,” says Lisa Cochrane, SVP of marketing at Allstate. “It allows theater of the mind, especially when you’re dealing with an intangible subject like protecting your stuff.”

Listen Up

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Triton Digital in Sherman Oaks supports the radio industry with a technological backbone amid rapid change driven by the Internet.

Old and New: Neal Schore, co-founder and CEO of Triton Digital, with antique radio in the company’s Sherman Oaks office.

As the radio industry evolves, Triton Digital has positioned itself to help traditional, on-air broadcasters and emerging digital musical service providers to deliver online content, measure audience numbers, and engage listeners.

Radio industry veterans Neal Schore and Mike Agovino lead the Sherman Oaks company, which was founded in 2006 and is backed financially by two private equity firms. Since the company’s start, investors have poured about $100 million into Triton for acquisitions and to expand the applicability of its technology offerings — strategies that have helped the company to grow.

In the U.S., Triton technology powers many top broadcasters, CBS and Clear Channel Communications among them, as well as music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify. The company also has a presence in more than 30 countries and is eyeing future expansion abroad. In addition to its San Fernando Valley headquarters, Triton operates offices in four other U.S. cities, plus Montreal, Geneva, Switzerland and Singapore. The firm employs about 270 people and is aiming to increase that number to 300 by year’s end. Revenue in 2011 was $39.9 million.

“This is for the largest broadcasters to the hobbyist — those individuals looking to broadcast from their garage,” Schore said.

Triton is made up of two divisions: one handles streaming audio, coordination of advertising, and real-time measurement of listeners; and the other provides the technology for email communications, games, contests, and rewards programs that build brand loyalty with listeners.

Spin forward

While Triton’s products and services are used by print and television clients, the company has had the biggest impact in the radio industry, which has been slow to embrace the digital future.

“The legacy radio industry has many people that are 30, 40, or 50 years in it and the digital world is frightening to them,” Agovino said.
To the management and staff at Triton Digital, the digital world is full of promise. In 2005, only about 1 percent of the listening public turned to streaming audio for entertainment, according to Triton. This year, that number will reach 8 percent and projected to stay on an upward trajectory.

You are looking at — by the end of 2014 — close to a quarter of listening being purely digital delivered content,” Agovino said.

Dianna Jason, the vice president of marketing for hip hop and R&B station KPWR Power 106 in Burbank, uses software from Triton for the station’s affinity program, Power Points.
Listeners earn points by viewing photos and videos at the station’s website, and participating in contests and surveys. The points can be exchanged for concert tickets, electronic devices, trips and meetings with artists played on Power 106, Jason said.

She said KPWR Power 106 considered other companies for the affinity program but selected Triton because it was responsive to adding new services to keep the platform updated.

“In the digital world what may seem like the item of the moment can become outdated and not the product of choice within weeks or months,” Jason said. “It was important to me to find a partner that would continue to invest in their product.”

Radio days

Agovino and Schore were acquaintances when they met for lunch in 2004 to discuss the future of the radio industry.

They had worked at competing radio sales organizations until Schore left the industry in 2000 to begin a startup based on advertising in parking lots. Agovino’s employer had been acquired by Clear Channel, and for a time, he ran its national sales company.

The pair recognized there were changes ahead for the radio industry as digital distribution gained traction. From within Clear Channel, Agovino said he saw how that company lacked the investment and vision for putting its content online. If that was true for Clear Channel, Agovino reasoned, it was likely true for competing radio networks.

So the pair decided the time was right to start a company focused on providing the infrastructure for streaming audio that radio broadcasters were missing.

“We thought that if we took our expertise and relationships and combined that with technology the industry would need there was a business in there,” Agovino said.

Schore handled the financing to get Triton off the ground. Having headed up two other companies backed by private money, he had contacts in the private equity world. He met with principals at Oaktree Capital Management, headquartered in Los Angeles, and the firm became Triton’s first shareholder. Later, Los Angeles-based Black Canyon Capital LLC became an investor.

Such financial support, however, is not without its challenges.

Partners at private equity firms can be brilliant investors but often lack the understanding of how a business actually works, Schore said. In recent years, there has been a shift in thinking and private equity firms are actively seeking business acumen among their staffs, he said.

“Oaktree did bring on operations executives that come from that world of running businesses to assess their perspective, which has added value to the (Triton) management team,” Schore said.

Bright future

Acquisitions have been a key part in Triton’s growth.

Between 2008 and 2010, the company acquired three other businesses to get its audio streaming division up and running. Two acquisitions between 2008 and 2009 provided the infrastructure for the digital applications and services division. Companies Triton has purchased either were not generating revenue, or had a small client base, Agovino said.

Triton’s audience engagement software helps radio clients to build relationships with listeners on an individual basis. Listeners voluntarily opt in to receive emails, participate in special promotions and contests, and to engage with on-air personalities via social media sites.

With its proprietary Webcast Metrics program, Triton provides real-time data collection of listener numbers to its clients. Those numbers are important in getting advertisers to air commercials over stations.

In September, the Media Rating Council accredited Webcast Metrics and Triton’s Monthly Ranker reports of top online audio streaming sites.

Schore said the accreditation shows that Triton demonstrated credibility in how it measures listeners at streaming sites. “It validates further our methods and process,” he said.

Third-party validation may help Triton as it fills in the gaps of the client lineup and brings in radio networks not using its streaming, measurement and audience engagement software.

Company officials say clients overseas offer more growth opportunity. Already in the past two years, Triton has gained traction in Latin America and Western Europe. Today, the company has about 10 percent of its clients outside the U.S., a number projected to rise to 25 percent in two years, Agovino said.

“Building the infrastructure to intelligently deliver content and advertising should be a strong rocket fuel for company growth,” Agovino said.

Pittman Envisions New Life for Radio

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:00:00 GMT

MTV Founder, Now at Clear Channel, Says Old Medium Can Be Cool Again

At the swanky Hotel du Cap on the French Riviera this spring, Clear Channel Communications Inc. Chief Executive Bob Pittman sponsored a select party for heavy hitters in the advertising world. After cocktails overlooking the sea, the guests dined on foie gras and roasted John Dory as Elton John performed a private concert, playing an oversize piano that had to be airlifted into the hotel.

After almost a decade of self-imposed corporate exile, Mr. Pittman is back in the corporate saddle and on a mission. In his new role heading Clear Channel, the MTV founder and high-profile AOL AOL +2.97%alum has a grandiose goal: to reinvent radio, a business many have left for dead.

"I've not had my adrenaline pumped up like this in years and I forgot how great it feels," he said, seated in his corner office overlooking Manhattan's Rockefeller Center. "As much as I've denied it by trying to stop working, I'm absolutely hard-wired to run companies."

Mr. Pittman, 58 years old, fled the corporate world in 2002 after exiting the now-broken-up AOL Time Warner in a cloud of recriminations over the ill-fated merger. He retreated to his favorite pastimes, flying his planes and traveling. He later launched a private investment firm with his own money, backing start-ups including email newsletter DailyCandy and the tequila brand Casa Dragones.

Now he's back in the building where he started MTV and where AOL Time Warner was based after its merger. Gone are the round spectacles and coifed hair from his AOL days, replaced by open-neck shirts and stubble. In an office adorned with models of the jets he has owned over the years and MTV Moonman awards, Mr. Pittman has been plotting a revival rooted in trying to make radio cool again and convincing marketers that radio deserves more than the 6% share of total ad spending it currently commands (television attracts around 50%).

It is a challenge unlike anything else he has taken on. Whereas his involvement with both MTV and AOL occurred when they were fresh and new,Radio is one of the oldest of old media. Its future was bleak even before the Internet and satellite radio came along, but now traditional radio faces an array of digital competitors in streaming music services, from Pandora to Spotify.

While most Americans still listen to radio in some form, radio advertising grew just 1% to $17.4 billion in 2011, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau.

To make life even tougher, Clear Channel is laboring under $20 billion of debt, a legacy of a 2008 leveraged buyout arranged right before that year's financial crisis. The company reported $4 billion in losses for each of 2008 and 2009 due to onerous impairment charges. By 2011, the outlook improved but the company was still in the red to the tune of $302 million.

"Bob's drawn to the challenge of a turnaround and working on something that most people think is doomed," said former MTV chief Tom Freston, who worked for Mr. Pittman in the early days of the music channel and is a fellow "Burner" (an attendee of the Burning Man arts extravaganza in the Nevada desert).

Born in Jackson, Miss., the son of a Methodist minister, Mr. Pittman turned his attention to Clear Channel two years ago at the instigation of its private-equity owners, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital. Drawn by the breadth of Clear Channel's radio and outdoor-advertising assets—it has 850 stations and a stable of big-name hosts including Ryan Seacrest—he made a $5 million investment and agreed to "help out part-time."

He was soon hooked. Mr. Pittman cut his teeth in radio in his teens, earning minimum wage as a disc jockey to pay for flying lessons. He agreed to become chief executive late last year, taking a part of his remuneration in the use of a company Dassault-Breguet Mystère Falcon jet for his travels.

Clear Channel makes half its revenue from outdoor advertising, a stable business that is the company's cash generator. But radio, with its lower fixed costs, generates two-thirds of earnings. And Mr. Pittman sees that business as having the biggest upside potential.

A marketer at heart, Mr. Pittman sees his challenge as shaking off radio's fusty image and winning back advertisers who left for other media. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, listeners never deserted radio. According to Arbitron, ARB -0.42%weekly listening has grown in the past decade to 242 million people from 224 million.

Mr. Pittman has been touring the country talking up radio and schmoozing advertisers with a series of "show business" events. He recently co-hosted a cocktail party for advertisers with consulting firm Medialink, featuring a performance by Stevie Nicks. Plotting a promotional blitz for its digital site iHeartRadio, Mr. Pittman splurged on a two-day concert to showcase "the power we have."

"I said, 'Why act like a start-up?' We need something that blows everyone's mind," he said.

To capture bigger advertisers who have traditionally seen radio as purely a local medium, the company is using its scale to pitch for national business. For American Express Co.'s AXP -0.99%Small Business Saturday event to promote local shopping, Clear Channel crafted a national campaign with customized ads in 150 markets. It isn't an easy goal. While Clear Channel has built a national infrastructure, each campaign has to be painstakingly stitched together.

Another challenge is locking in a new generation. Data from Arbitron suggests teen listeners are on the rise, although they are increasingly turning to outlets like YouTube to discover music.

Building a digital footprint is crucial. Digital commands just 4% of radio advertising but it is fast growing. Mr. Pittman's plan is to make Clear Channel's stations available free on as many platforms as possible. Clear Channel ranks second among domestic online audio networks, according to Triton Digital, but it is dwarfed by Pandora, albeit in a slightly different business. (Pandora offers a personalized music service, a feature Clear Channel added just last year.)

Mr. Pittman may not have the luxury of time to prove his approach. While Clear Channel has bought itself some breathing space by renegotiating some of its near-term debt, Standard & Poor's says its debt leverage and interest coverage need to improve "to have flexibility to meet 2016 debt maturities."

"Some of this is out of his control: What happens in the next 12-24 months with the economy will play a big part," says Joel Hollander, former CEO of CBS Radio. But he added: "He's thinking out of the box and he has to be credited with that."

"The worst thing to do is nothing," says Mr. Pittman. "You have to take chances."

“The Technology Problem is on Your Side, Not Ours.”

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:15:00 GMT

Ad-Insertion technology has been in the news quite a bit lately after Saga Executive Vice President Warren Lada voiced his disappointment with the technology. He points out that not only is the ad revenue not there, the technology radio has to work with degrades their product. Levels are off, and transitions from spots to music are poorly timed. He says, it’s a product that broadcasters would never put out over the air so why should they stream it. Today we hear from Triton’s Mike Agovino who, as you would imagine, has a different take on the issue.

So, you probably disagree with Warren Lada

Agovino: I have always had a healthy respect for SAGA. They have certainly been consistent winners in their markets over the years and have some great brands. But, they have definitely been outspoken in trying to recruit others into their way of thinking on this. To me, the only logic behind trying to recruit anyone else into this kind of thinking is so that you've got some company when people start pointing fingers down the road a bit about antiquated thinking.

I just don't understand. If they had done a legitimate analysis and come up with the findings they say they came up with, why it would matter to them whether or not anyone else joined their cause. It seems to have become a cause, and they are out doing a bit of politicking about it. It's just strange to me that this is a strategy for a broadcaster. I don't know why you would be propagandizing it.

RI: There is something to be said about the transitions. It's not real clean.

Agovino: It depends on a number of things. I can tell you that our solution is very clean. It's very clean when it's being utilized the right way. The very first noise was made on this maybe 8 weeks ago. I had a rather exhaustive internal analysis done where we listen to a bunch of different client streams. I’m not going to tell you we didn't find instances where there were clunky transitions or where there were different audio levels. But what we did find was 100% of those issues were correctable with proper attention to detail on how the audio and data are getting to the stream. In other words, those were issues on the broadcast side, not issues on the technology side.

From their side, they really wanted this to be a "set it and forget it" kind of technology where you don't put any thought into it. There is just not a lot of technology our there that you are going to optimize it's value by putting no time and attention towards learning how to use it, no effort towards becoming an internal expert on it. If you don't pay attention to it, well then of course, especially over a period of time, it is not going to sound the way that it certainly can sound if it is properly administered. My position to you would be speaking for Triton, but I think I am speaking for a broader cross-section of the vendors in this space that without the broadcaster taking an active role, being a participant, understanding how to administer the technology the right way and to devote some resources, the quality is going to suffer. My position on that would be that in 100% of the instances that we have examined over the last 6 to 8 weeks, the problem has been on the broadcast side, administering, not on the technology not doing what it's supposed to.

RI: Part of what Waren is saying, when you add it all up the cost is too high.

Agovino: The fact of the matter is, the average radio station, and I will give you the high side, all-in on license and ad serving technology, is looking at a few hundred dollar per month. Even a top ten market station delivering a meaningful audience online is maybe running into a couple thousand dollars a month in cost for that individual station. Your costs are variable based upon advertising. So, they are not incurring variable costs unless selling ads. By definition you are monetizing or you wouldn't have that expense. The whole idea of this having to do with expense associated with the technology is just plain ridiculous.

RI: Are broadcasters making their money back through sales?

Agovino: Of course they are. The thing they are not making back and what this is mainly all about is the royalty payments. The royalty payments are at the very heart of all issues associated with online audio. The fact of the matter is, the artists and the labels are not going to flinch unless they get some movement on the over the air side. The broadcasters aren't going to flinch on the on-air side, until they are so fearful of their futures that they finally have to flinch. I don't know which will come first. That's what is at the core of things. The cost to stream and exert advertising are hard to manage in the equation. The overwhelming majority of the expense of streaming is the royalty aspect. That is the battle that is going on.

I assure you, that none of this is about the cost of our technology or any other vendors in the space. It may have a little bit more to do with costs that they would see themselves incurring to execute with excellence. That's possible. But, that's the same thing as saying, "I could have a great morning show, but I’m going to choose not to. I'm going to take this show out of syndication because it's cheap and I can get 50% of the ratings." It's all short-sighted decision making. In the online model, there is only one economic deterrent. That is the oppressive royalty circumstance.

RI: So you think Saga is wrong for streaming its on-air signal

Agovio: Saga is short-sighted. If they did any sort of deeper analysis of where the advertising market was going, and what the Fortune 1000 are expecting, the last thing it would've told them is that they should walk away from distribution and platforms where they learn more about their audience and are able to target across a broad section of attributes and able to join aggregation plays that democratize audience size. It would all point to not investing less here but investing more here. It’s disappointing that any broadcaster operating in 2012 could believe this was the right strategy. Despite the propaganda, I have strong faith that very few are going to follow despite all of the economic challenges that exist today. I expect very few people to follow this line of thinking.

RI: So, you are not worried that somebody is going to call you up and cancel plans to ad insert?

Agovino: I’m not going to tell you that I don't think there’s a possibility that some other folks would join Saga, because I’m not going to tell you that Saga is the only company in the industry that doesn't get it. But, I know that there are a lot of companies that do get it and a lot of companies that are forward thinking and a lot of companies that understand the transitions that are going on in consumer behavior and the advertising marketplace. What I am very confident in is that there will not be a lot of companies that go down the road that they are going down and you are not going to see many of the real market leading companies do it.

Increase Radio’s Profile at SXSW!

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:00:00 GMT

In this transmedia world of ours any gathering that attracts only folks from one medium is missing the point.

SXSW is no such gathering, and radio should be represented alongside music, film, and interactive. Want to know where radio’s future is? It’s in attendance at SXSW and other such conferences.

Now you have a chance to elevate radio’s role at SXSW and it’s only a click away.

If you think, as most everyone in radio does, that the current system of music royalties is an almost arbitrary crazy quilt mess of onerous free enterprise-killing penalties, then here’s your chance to do something about it.

SXSW panels are picked by you, the fans and attendees. And Triton Digital is angling to produce a panel called The Royal(ties) Pain in the Music Industry’s A$$.

It will cover these topics:

How much are broadcast, satellite and online radio sources paying in royalties?

How did the discrepancy in royalties for broadcast, satellite and online radio come about?

What are some of the recent legislations dealing with royalties?

What challenges are preventing a standardized royalty rate?

What are some potential solutions?

How can those involved in the radio industry (broadcasters, record labels and artists) work together to maximize revenues for all parties involved?

Please go here and vote for this panel if you want radio to have a higher profile at increasingly influential conferences like SXSW.

You’ll have to register, but it’s easy. Please do it.

Gamification can Transform Radio’s Digital Platforms

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 13:15:00 GMT

Chris Bell is president of Triton Digital’s Applications and Services division. Triton is an innovator in bringing game mechanics to radio platforms. Indeed, gamification is a major emphasis for the company and I have been impressed by their investments in this area.

So what is gamification, and why does it matter to radio?

How does gamification dramatically improve the engagement between consumers and our radio brands, and how can this engagement be effectively monetized?

Chris answers all these questions and more in this short Q&A. Listen!

Click here to listen to the full interview.

RadioBDC Launches Live, Streaming on Boston.com

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Popular local on-air personalities Henry Santoro, Julie Kramer, Adam 12 and Paul Driscoll return to Boston radio with the best in alternative music, exclusive interviews

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 13, 2012-- Enriching Boston’s alternative music scene, Boston.com will launch its new interactive, live streaming radio station at noon today, with a first song chosen by listeners.

RadioBDC, the BDC stands for Boston Dot Com, is hosted by former longtime WFNX Radio on-air personalities Henry Santoro, Julie Kramer, Adam 12 and program director Paul Driscoll, and features alternative music, exclusive musician interviews, journalists and content from The Boston Globe and Boston.com, interactive contests and much more. Listeners can tune in online on the Boston.com homepage and through iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile applications.

"RadioBDC provides another feature to users in addition to the wide range of offerings on Boston.com -- from live sports, award-winning videos and entertainment, to the latest event info and eclectic blogs," said Boston Globe publisher Christopher Mayer. "We believe RadioBDC is the soundtrack for Boston.com. You can read about the Pats while listening to Mumford and Sons."

RadioBDC will stream around-the-clock, with News Director Henry Santoro kicking off the day in the morning slot, from 7 to 11 a.m. Santoro will also welcome reporters and editors from The Boston Globe and Boston.com to discuss news stories and issues. Julie Kramer will join Santoro at 10 a.m., and take the reins from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. – delivering her special one-hour Lunch at Your Desk program at noon, with alternative hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Longtime Boston favorite and deejay-about-town Adam 12 takes over from 2 to 6 p.m., taking listener requests at 4 p.m. And Program Director Paul Driscoll will apply his legendary ears to showcasing the best in alternative talent from 6 to 10 p.m. Artist interviews, contests, events and live concerts will also play a consistent part in programming.

Fans are also invited to join the RadioBDC crew at a launch party at The Paradise Rock Club, headlined by Boston’s own Kay Hanley, at 8 p.m. on Aug. 16. Many fans also voted for the station’s first musical pick via the RadioBDC Twitter handle @RadioBDC, and on the Boston.com RadioBDC blog and RadioBDC Facebook page.

Triton Digital, a streaming audio leader that currently supports more than 5,000 stations, will provide RadioBDC’s platform with state-of the-art technology.

More information on programming, live performances and events will be released throughout the fall.

About Boston.com

Boston.com is one of the most visited regional portals in the U.S. and is wholly owned by The New York Times Company, a leading global, multimedia news and information company with 2011 revenues of $2.3 billion, that includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com, Boston.com, About.com and related properties. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

Source: Boston.com

Elevate Communications
Mary Zanor, 617-548-1107 (mobile)
mzanor@elevatecom.com
@BGlobeComm

Are You on Work Email After Hours? You're Not Alone

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Do you check your work email on an iPhone, BlackBerry or other smartphone after-hours?

Join the club: More than 80 percent of workers say they continue to work from home even after they leave the office, according to a recent survey from mobile-research firm Good Technology. Nearly two-thirds said they check their work email before 8 a.m., and a whopping 40 percent admitted to checking email at the dinner table!

“All you have to do is go out to a nice restaurant and look at all the people checking their emails in between courses to see how pervasive it is,” said Michael Crom, the chief learning office at the Dale Carnegie Institute, a corporate training organization.

Some people say checking email after-hours helps them get organized, get through the crush of email and better balance their work-family life. Others say it’s becoming a huge problem — one that’s masking other issues.

“Checking, sending and receiving work emails after-hours is becoming an American disease,” said Jeremy Redleaf, a filmmaker and founder of job-listing site OddJobNation.com. “Not only is it often expected that you’ll be available, some people use it to hedge against daytime slacking.”

Whether you think it’s helpful or destructive is debatable, but here’s a staggering fact: Working from home adds up to an average of a month and a half of overtime per year, the Good Technology study found.

In Canada, there are several class-action lawsuits on this issue, where employees are suing their employers for overtime pay for this extra work done off-hours. Last year, Brazil actually passed a law stating that employees are entitled to overtime pay for this work. German auto maker Volkswagen got around the issue by shutting off union workers’ email half an hour after their shift ends, then putting it back on half an hour before their shift starts the next day.

How would this ever play out in America? Would companies have to start paying overtime or would they simply follow Volkswagen and shut off the email after-hours? Would gadget-addicted workers panic? Riot in the streets? Or, would they actually be happier?

“If my employer shut off my phone during off-hours, I would probably freak out!” said Gina Vergel, the assistant director of communications for Fordham University. “I was responding to emails when I boarded the cruise ship I just took this past weekend, so clearly I need an intervention!”

An informal reader poll conducted by PC Magazine, where you think you’d find the most gadget addicts, found that 43 percent said, yes, they’d like their company to turn off access to work emails after-hours. Fifteen percent said, “No! What if something important happens?” Twenty percent said “Maybe a compromise; important emails only,” and 19 percent said, “Doesn’t matter; I don’t check email after-hours anyway.”

“I think many people would welcome ‘email amnesty’ if it meant everybody that would normally be sending email were shut off as well,” said Joyce Maroney, director of the Workforce Institute at workforce-management firm Kronos.

Redleaf said, “Culturally, we tend to respond strongly to anything that takes away control... but, after an initial outcry, I'd wager that people would find themselves happier.”

“I think we all would love to be able to send email to others after-hours but not receive it!” joked Marie McIntyre, a career coach and the author of “Secrets to Winning at Office Politics.”

“Employees with demanding managers who constantly intrude into their personal time would undoubtedly throw a party,” McIntyre said. “But people who habitually use quiet time in the evening to get organized for the next day might be upset. However, I expect that everyone would eventually adapt — except perhaps for those very demanding managers, who might just start sending messages through LinkedIn or Facebook!”

Most people agreed — the key is setting ground rules.

Crom said freelancers and junior staff probably shouldn’t be expected to put in additional unpaid hours, but senior level employees should be treated differently because they have more responsibility and are expected to be able to complete more work in less time.

McIntyre said employers should be more respectful of employees and try to contact them after-hours only when it’s an emergency.

“Bosses need to be reasonable and not use email as an electronic leash,” McIntyre said. “And people also need to engage in a little self-management — unless there is an emergency at work, you don’t need to be checking your phone every ten minutes or even every hour."

“The entire concept of the ‘work day’ is changing, but that doesn’t mean everyone can’t feel respected and compensated,” Redleaf said. “If someone goes so far as to file an overtime lawsuit, the problem is bigger than lost wages.”

Employers, Redleaf said, need to understand the value of offering employees flexibility, autonomy and ownership in their work.

“Their workers aren’t monkeys … only motivated by the promise of more bananas,” he said. “If they empower their employees to take back control of their day and feel a part of something bigger than themselves, I have a feeling they won’t be facing nearly as many lawsuits.”

McIntyre recalls one client who found his BlackBerry such a burden that he locked it in his car every night.

She stressed the value of a little down time.

“Even though we now live in a world of 24/7 communication, we have to realize that people need time away from work to relax and refresh,” McIntyre said. “Giving your brain a vacation from work will actually make you much more productive when you return.”

Patrick Reynolds, the EVP of marketing at tech firm Triton Digital, offered a touching — and hilarious — account of his attempt at being unplugged for 12 hours.

As soon as he walked out the door to go to work, he said he fidgeted with the “now-impotent headphones” in his pocket nervously. Then, he started to notice all the things he never heard before – the birds chirping. The sirens.

“[T]here are a lot of sirens in the city. Who knew?” he observed.

Things were going well until it started to rain on the way home and he panicked about whether his daughter’s soccer practice had been canceled.

“Did my wife pick her up? Did a teammate’s family drive her home? Was she standing there under a tree, a mop of soaked red hair pasted to her forehead waiting, waiting for her Dad to arrive?”

“How would I know without my [BLEEP]-ing phone?!”

Disaster averted, he made it through to the end of the day and actually talked to his wife before bed.

“While hard at first — this was my prime iPad hour after all — I nevertheless got the hang of it after some time.”

Surviving his 12-hour ordeal, he concluded the next morning: He concluded: “Technology is awesome. There’s just too [EXPLETIVE] much of it.”

Aggregators Help Radio Reach Online Audiences

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 16:00:00 GMT

For the radio industry, there may be no better symbol for the challenges of adapting to the digital age than two candy-colored mobile apps.

The apps, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, are aggregators — conduits for thousands of online radio streams. With a few taps on a smartphone, a listener can dart among a pop station in New York, gospel in Atlanta and talk almost anywhere.

Both have quickly amassed big audiences. TuneIn, which offers 70,000 streams from around the world, announced on Monday that it has 40 million monthly users. IHeartRadio, owned by the broadcasting giant Clear Channel Communications, has been downloaded 95 million times and has attracted more than 12 million registered users.

For broadcasters, these aggregators can help reach audiences in the growing but increasingly fragmented world of online radio, which can mean anything from a customized playlist on Pandora or Spotify to an iTunes stream.

“Our mission is about getting our content to as wide an audience as possible,” said Anil Dewan, the director of interactive media at KCRW, a public station in Santa Monica, Calif., whose digital outlets include TuneIn, iHeartRadio, iTunes, Spotify and an app of its own.

At the same time, many broadcasters say they worry about the rising costs of online royalties; the plans of the companies behind the apps; and the possibility of being lost within the aggregators, like needles in enormous digital haystacks.

Both aggregators let users find stations by typing a city, genre or station name into their search bars. TuneIn also points listeners to any station currently playing a given artist or song; iHeartRadio has an extensive custom-radio function, modeled after Pandora.

But as businesses they represent two poles of media. TuneIn, in Palo Alto, Calif., which started as a simple directory, transformed itself into an app purveyor two years ago, with streams that include not only radio and podcasts, but also emergency scanner signals. Recently the company raised $16 million in new investment, bringing its total financing to $22 million.

Clear Channel, which owns 850 stations, added a custom radio feature to iHeartRadio last September, making it a Pandora competitor as well as a platform for almost 2,000 stations. Hundreds of those belong to direct competitors, a few of which, including Cumulus Media and Univision, have made exclusive deals.

The apps are going head-to-head in the marketplace as consumers grow accustomed to tapping on one app for all their radio needs, and manufacturers of everything from televisions to cars begin to incorporate suites of streaming apps.

“They are both competing to be one-stop shopping in the Wild West of Internet radio,” said Paul Heine, a senior editor at the trade publication Inside Radio. “They both want to be a destination that helps consumers navigate radio’s infinite dial online.”

For now only a fraction of the radio audience is online; John Hogan, chief executive of Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, the company’s radio and online division, said that 98 percent of listening to his company’s stations is still on its terrestrial signals. But it is growing quickly. According to Triton Digital, a company that measures Internet radio audiences, Clear Channel’s online audience has risen 117 percent in the last year.

“What will end up happening is that every radio station stream is going to become a secondary station, if not a primary one,” said Jackie Paulus, director of marketing and digital innovation for WGN, a news and talk station in Chicago owned by the Tribune Company.

But making money through online radio remains a puzzle, largely because of its royalty structure.

While terrestrial broadcasters pay music publishers negotiated rates, no matter how many people are listening, online and satellite radio operators pay publishers — as well as labels and artists — for each new listener. Pandora, while enjoying rapid growth, still pays more than half its revenue in music royalties.

“We look at products like online music lockers and playlist services, and while they have really interesting features, they’re not businesses,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview last week.

“The great thing about iHeartRadio,” he said, “is that it is just one of a number of opportunities that we have to monetize the audience.”

For radio stations, the question of joining these services is thorny.

According to several broadcasters, Clear Channel has been aggressive in pushing for exclusivity, offering in exchange greater promotion and visibility within the app. But most broadcasters have resisted. Aside from its first few big deals, none of Clear Channel’s arrangements for iHeartRadio have been exclusive.

One reason for that, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing business relationships, was uneasiness on the part of broadcasters about joining a platform run by the biggest player in the market. Others said their strategy was simply to be everywhere they could possibly be.

“Everybody is looking at this and saying, look, you don’t know where the world is going, and you need to be in a lot of places,” said Jeff Smulyan, the chief executive of Emmis Communications, whose 20-station chain has deals with both Clear Channel and TuneIn.

Mr. Hogan said Clear Channel had “pursued” deals with fewer than 10 radio companies, not counting public stations. Regardless, what exclusivity means here is unclear. While Cumulus has an exclusive deal with Clear Channel, hundreds of its stations are listed on TuneIn.

A spokesman for Cumulus said they are being streamed without authorization, but John Donham, TuneIn’s chief, said that as a directory service it did not need permission to list any station, though it will remove them if asked.

Still, Mr. Donham said that TuneIn’s neutrality in the radio business made it a safer choice for broadcasters.

“We are not a broadcaster, so we do not have any inherent interest for any broadcaster to succeed or fail,” he said, “whereas there are other companies who are both the broadcaster and platform provider, so there is an inherent conflict of interest there.”

For plenty of broadcasters, however, the critical question for any Web platform is how many new listeners it can bring in.

Mr. Dewan of KCRW said that the station had embraced numerous platforms and every kind of social media that had come its way, and that one result was that 20 to 25 percent of listening to the station is now done online, from every place imaginable. One D.J. keeps a tally of where listeners say they are each night, from East Los Angeles to Barcelona.

Mr. Dewan said: “We do get e-mails from people saying, ‘I’m listening in the rain in Cambodia. By the way, how do we get a bumper sticker?’ “

Traditional Media Still Most Trusted Sources of Info

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:30:00 GMT

TV most trusted source of information, but internet key to researching products and services

eMarketer has noted that while digital has caused some traditional media to suffer in terms of consumer time and attention—notably, print and radio—TV still takes up the bulk of US adults’ time with media. And June research from Triton Digital, a digital service provider for online and traditional radio, shows the medium also garners the most trust from consumers.

More than 45% of respondents in North America, including nearly 50% of female respondents, said they trusted television the most for news and information, followed by newspapers and then radio. Only one in eight respondents selected online news sources as most trusted.

And while most of those surveyed said they had purchased a product as a result of a commercial on traditional media like TV, radio or a newspaper (63.6%), recommendations on these media did not influence the majority of respondents to favor a particular product or service.

Instead, even though it falls outside the “most-trusted” territory, respondents were more likely to turn to the internet for product research and recommendations once they had decided to make a purchase but needed to choose a brand or specific item to buy. While a television commercial influenced over 28% of respondents, more than 61% said the same for research online.

Clearly, internet users have become very used to—and adept at—using the web to find deals and offers; get recommendations from friends, family and experts; and research sometimes-complicated product decisions. Marketers have many online channels for educating consumers about products and services, and this is the key to getting many individuals to move from “consideration” to “purchase.” But with time and attention—and trust—still focused on traditional media, TV, radio and print are not to be neglected.

John Rosso Power Player Interview

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:15:00 GMT

In a sense, John Rosso is hanging 10, riding a new wave - the wave being digital media. As Triton's head of Market Development, Rosso oversees the tracking of digital media usage, which like that wave, continues to grow unabated ... and no one knows how big it will become. Here's how he's enjoying the ride...

When did you first get interested in the digital/Net side of things?

I first got interested in the Internet in the early '90s. I launched the first website for a radio station in New York City, probably around 1993, when I put up WNEWFM.COM. A couple of years later, I went to work at ABC Radio Networks, and put up some of the very first audio streams for ABC News. So you could say that since the mid-'90s, I've been very interested in that side of the business.

What was it like launching the first website in New York radio? Could you tell back then how much it would evolve and develop in a relatively short time?

The websites we made back then were cave paintings in comparison to what's possible today; that's for sure. I don't think I was particularly visionary about what was happening with the web, but I can tell you that when I was first exposed to the graphical web browsing environment, I felt something like what I imagine people felt when they first saw television. It was exciting and compelling - and I knew that much of media's future would be built online, but I didn't know how far we could go and how quickly we could get there.

Describe the corporate radio perspective of Net radio when it comes to streaming and digital platforms; have they been too cautious in your eyes?

They all know that they need to be there and they need to do it. It's true that many struggle with monetization and with figuring out the economics of the music royalty situation. There are some new costs in streaming that broadcasters are not accustomed to and which are not built into their original business model. There are certainly some challenges there, but it's hard to find broadcasters -- save a very small number -- that don't believe their stations should be available online.

Yet there is a persistent feeling among some in radio that Net radio platforms don't generate adequate ROI, so it's still not worth a major investment at this time. What's your take?

Some of it is just about patience. The audience is already migrating. Just look at the dramatic increase in listening to online radio every month. The industry is getting there, too. Advertisers want to reach this audience; the buyers have money to spend. The sellers just have to figure out how to meet the market, and they are figuring it out. There are companies out there making significant amounts of money from streaming. So, it is starting to be figured out.

Do you feel initiatives like Clear Channel's iHeartRadio can spur the industry at-large to invest more in the digital platform/s potential?

If you look at all the very creative things Clear Channel has done with iHeartRadio, they're doing it because they know the appetite for consuming their product is going to grow online - and they're going there to find that audience. That's the reason Kidd Kraddick has a channel on iHeart, because a growing segment of his audience wants 24/7 access to his radio show. That's the reason why Clear Channel has its own customized music service. There's an audience out there for it; why ignore them and allow someone else to serve them? I think the radio industry is doing what it should be doing to leverage its product through new technology, to find more interesting ways to engage their audience. It just needs to do more of it ... and faster.

What brought you to Triton?

Triton is in a very exciting place in the business right now. When I left my last job, I took a bit of time to look around the media business to find the places where interesting things were happening and see where I might be able to contribute. Look at what's happening in terms of the migration of listening to IP-based delivery via streaming audio on mobile devices. Look at the increasing proliferation of IP activity in automobile dashboards and steering wheels with products like Apple's Eyes Free.

The plain-and-simple fact is that more people will be consuming steaming audio one way or another on their mobiles and in their cars in the coming years. Triton is in a great spot for that; they created the Net audio standard in audience measurement in webcast metrics, have the industry's leading campaign management platform, and the industry's best content delivery infrastructure. It's a triple-threat that I wanted to be a part of.

In terms of measuring Internet audio consumption, Triton really is by far the leader. There are some other folks who also try to cover this space, whether it's Arbitron or any of the other companies out there, Triton's got all of the largest radio companies, be they Clear Channel or Cumulus, on top of ESPN and services such as Pandora. They're all part of the Triton measurement platform today. Our Webcast Metrics service really defines the known universe when it comes to Net audio.

What kind of challenges do you face at Triton ...what kind of goals?

The biggest challenge is moving quickly enough to bring to market the tools and data that are being demanded today. You can only build things so fast; even though the market might want certain things now, you still have to go through the process of software development -- and that's not a simple thing, but a sophisticated process. It can be very hard to be patient enough to do it right. So the greatest challenge is moving really fast to meet the marketplace demand.

So there's nothing you can do speed the development process up?

It's really a matter of how quickly things can be built. In part, it's finding more of the right people to build them, but even fully staffed, it takes a certain amount of time to build digital things. The analogy I use is this: You can't put nine women in a room and expect them to make a baby in a month. It takes a certain amount of time to have a baby, so just throwing additional people at the process doesn't always solve the problems inherent to developing software and digital programs.

Pandora recently announced that it will use Triton to provide audience metrics. How will that impact not just Pandora, but the overall Net radio business?

Triton has been measuring Pandora's audience for a long time; the difference is Pandora decided to sign on to be the first customer for our Webcast Metrics Local product. Triton is here to measure anybody that needs measurement. We believe very firmly in the digital audio business and the Net radio business, and we're here to help foster that marketplace.

When it comes to monitoring local use, can Triton methodology pinpoint users by zip codes?

There are all sorts of geo-targeting systems out there. They are very prevalent in the display advertising business and are available to us. It's really the most immediate way to increase the value of online ad inventory. Even better than geo-targeting databases is when the publisher collects registration data from the user - we're talking age, gender and other information. Appropriately-targeted listeners are much more valuable to the advertiser.

Would you say your biggest current challenge is monitoring and measuring mobile usage?

The biggest challenge in measuring mobile usage is defining what mobile really means. Is it someone actually moving, or just consuming on a mobile-capable device, or one that could be in a docking station on that person's desk? We can determine the type of connected device pretty easily. Cross-tabbing that information with a person's actual location based on GPS data doesn't seem like a great leap in technology to me.

How has the advertising community reacted to Triton's audience metrics in terms of being more interested is placing buys on the web?

Webcast Metrics has become a critical third-party measurement for the industry. Buyers know that anyone can come in with numbers on a spreadsheet. What we provide is MRC-accredited data that can be relied upon to conduct a financial transaction. The idea of third-party measurement is widely accepted in the agency world.

Do you see the ceiling for the digital/online market in terms of optimum audience?

I think everything plateaus eventually. However, media consumption is quickly transitioning to IP-based delivery systems, and consumers are exerting more control over what they consume and when. That's not going to change or slow down any time soon.

I have no way of predicting a ceiling, and I don't think anybody's willing to do that. All I can say is listening to online audio is growing at an extraordinary rate. This past year the growth in total listening hours was 40%, and that growth seems to be accelerating.

Considering the speed of the technological changes in your industry, do you set both short-term and long-term goals? And exactly what kind of goals do you set for Triton ... are they more in terms of getting more clients to your products and services, or is the helping better monitor and foster the growth of the digital medium?

When I think of goals, I would say anything long term is measured in months, not years, Right now, my goal is to be very, very focused on facilitating a rising tide that will lift all of the Internet audio boats. Naturally, we want to help foster the development of a marketplace for digital audio as an ad unit, promote business in general, and also promote Triton's tools and data measurement products.

Bottom line: You believe that Triton is on the precipice of an imminent digital media boom.

For sure. I feel like the wheels are just about to lift off the runway. The digital plane is just taking off. I'm thrilled to be part of Triton. There's this incredibly bright future for internet-delivered media, its audience, and the companies that provide services and products for that marketplace.