It’s often said that “What gets measured, gets managed.” It also follows that what’s easiest to measure is what gets the most attention.

For media companies, that usually means their top two Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) relate to advertising revenue: Pacing against Last Year, and Pacing against Budget.

But do these KPI metrics actually move the needle? Simple pacing stats are fine for benchmarking sales performance but don’t surface opportunities to improve account management, sales strategies, or operational processes.

Some media companies have tried to use the data in their traffic systems to create new KPIs. Finance, Sales, and IT teams have quickly learned that doing so is more difficult than they might have imagined – spreadsheets simply aren’t robust enough to support home-grown Business Intelligence tools. Even devoted “data teams” of Excel experts struggle to generate performance metrics that managers can easily understand and, more importantly, take action on.

That’s where dedicated Business Intelligence (BI) tools can help. BI solutions like WideOrbit’s WO Analytics automatically generate reports from the mountain of data collected by your traffic system, using both pre-defined performance metrics and custom, company-specific KPIs.

Below are just three examples of KPIs media companies can measure when running business intelligence tools on traffic system data. Some clients have improved their top lines by as much as 5% just by reviewing these three metrics that matter:

• Are pre-empts, make-goods, and ad credits helping or hurting profits? Staying on top of these everyday expenses can provide additional lift from closed revenue. Simply optimizing pre-empts can increase ad revenue by 5%.
• What price discounting structures are we offering advertisers? It’s easy to lose sight of the discount an advertiser has been offered in the rush of closing a sale. By taking a closer look at traffic data, WO Analytics has identified discounts as high as 80% that managers were unaware of. That’s an extreme case, but even lower discounts can significantly impact revenue if they become the norm rather than the exception.
• How much customer churn are we experiencing? Study after study agrees: it costs much less to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one. Repeat customers also spend significantly more than new clients, resulting in better revenue outcomes. The first step to cultivating a healthy, repeat-customer base is understanding how many of your current advertisers are returning and how many are jumping ship, so you can then devise better strategies to improve retention.

These examples are just scratching the surface of what’s possible by applying business intelligence tools to the data in your traffic system – data you already own.

By harnessing the power of the data collected by your traffic software, you will gain new tools to measure the metrics that matter, allowing you to make better business decisions to drive sales performance and maximize business relationships.

Contact us to learn more about how WO Analytics can help you better analyze business performance, pinpoint inefficiencies, and identify new revenue opportunities.