How an international Media group made cross-media advertising simple with CloudSense and Salesforce

A note on our anonymous case studies

Our customers can't always share the inner workings of their tech, or the numbers behind their business. 

But we still have some great stories to tell. Stories that might resonate with you and your business. 

The background

Our customer is a market leader in advertising sales and distribution, with a huge audience spread across channels. But the rapid digitization of society, and the mass migration of customers online, left the publisher facing new challenges in optimizing its advertising revenue.

With business transformation a priority, the forward-thinking publishers had already invested in Salesforce. But to maintain its position in the market, the Media group needed to update and improve its ad booking systems.

The main aim was to find a platform that powered the sales and fulfillment of both print and digital advertising.

To achieve these goals, and make the most of its investment in cloud technology, the publisher elected to extend its Salesforce capabilities. After evaluating solutions with Accenture, CloudSense’s Salesforce-native platform proved the best option to transform the publisher’s ad booking system.

Challenges catering for cross-media ad consumption

With the publisher’s readers moving online, digital advertising had caught up and overtaken traditional channels to become the key revenue stream.

But with no single place for agents to sell and book both print and digital advertising, the shift in demand made ad sales an increasingly complex and time consuming process.  

Limited flexibility and visibility for sales 

Reliance on a number of separate legacy systems – all of which weren’t integrated with one another or Salesforce –  meant there was limited visibility across the ad sales process.

The Solution Manager and project leader at the Media group explained,

“For the growing digital department in particular, the inability to place their product and orders into the existing system was frustrating.” 

She continued, “The lack of cohesion between systems led to a reliance on slow manual processes, while swivel chair processes and rekeying inevitably led to inaccuracies in orders.”  

Catering for internal and external teams

In addition to their internal ad sales team, the publisher also uses external booking agents. Both internal and external ad sales agents had limited access to key information, such as contending bookings or the residual inventory that needed selling.

This made the need for a single view of the ad booking process even more pressing.

“The ad booking team were desperate for more flexibility around what they could sell, as well as greater cross-team visibility and a reduction in the amount of manual details they had to input,” the project leader expanded. 

To overcome these challenges the publisher wanted a single, integrated ad booking platform, with automated processes and a 360-degree view of customers and ad inventory. 

An end-to-end ad booking platform with CloudSense and Salesforce

With CloudSense, the Media group can sell and deliver print and digital ad sales through a single advertising hub on Salesforce.  

CloudSense’s seamless bi-directional integration with Google Ad Manager provides real-time insights, visibility and control over all digital advertising on Salesforce. The real-time integration ensures ad operations and traffickers can make instant in-flight changes to digital campaigns that are immediately recognized in Salesforce.  

Accurate cross-media ad sales

With CloudSense’s cross-media functionality, the publisher has streamlined and automated previously manual processes.

The project leader commented, “This has increased efficiency and given ad sales and operations teams full visibility across digital and print ad inventory, all on Salesforce.”

The newly visible, auditable and automated cross-media ad processes have transformed accuracy and cut errors right from quotes, through to billing.

“All advertising inventory is now stored in a single product catalog and structured in dynamic branches. This gives ad sales instant access to the right product lines – making sales faster and more accurate,” she continued.

Simple user interface improves sales capability on-the-go

A simple user interface has helped sales agents pick up the platform quickly, with minimal training and onboarding. 

For external agents, the new ad booking platform has been a game-changer. They can now access the platform on a tablet browser, giving them all the tools and information they need to sell on-the-go.

Results – from 3 systems to a single integrated platform

The Media group has gone from using 3 disparate ad systems, with minimal integration, to one single, integrated ad booking platform.

The platform provides a single view of customers and inventory. As the project leader said:

“With CloudSense our digital advertising is no longer an add-on, but at the centre of our advertising sales hub.”

With one single point of access for data entry, hugely increased visibility, and an auditable end-to-end sales process for print and digital advertising, the publishers have also achieved vastly improved accuracy. 

By automating previously manual processes and using a single product catalog for all advertising inventory, the Media group has seen vastly improved product selection times.

Along with optimizing its end-to-end ad lifecycle commercially, the reinvented advertising processes have improved the publisher’s customer experience.