SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 Over the past two decades, there\u2019s been a lot of progress made in removing friction from the local television and radio buying process. But it typically doesn\u2019t pay for agencies to buy local media, so even more automation is on the way, according to WideOrbit\u2019s Eric Matthewson.<\/p>\n
WideOrbit was founded 18 years ago to rebuild the systems that supported local media, Founder & CEO Matthewson explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the WideOrbit Connect<\/a> conference. Now the company is the backbone for more than 90% of local TV stations and about half of local radio stations.<\/p>\n On the national side\u2014which is pretty much another world from local TV and radio\u2014WideOrbit is the pipeline for about 30% of national cable TV networks. \u201cWe run their backbone ad systems from order entry to receipt of cash,\u201d Mathewson says of WideOrbit\u2019s clients.<\/p>\n While there are many reasons to increase transactional automation, an elemental one stems from the way local advertisers compensate their agencies to plan and buy local TV and radio inventory, according to Mathewson. The rates are so low, \u201cthey really don\u2019t make money on local broadcast compared to the more efficient buying processes in digital and national.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the term programmatic and its utility in local media, Mathewson<\/a> draws a distinction between digital and its real-time bidding for advertising inventory, along with audience targeting. In linear media, with traditional TV or radio buying schedules, \u201cthere\u2019s not a real-time nature to it and there\u2019s not typically a one to-one-targeting.\u201d<\/p>\n