By Brian Thoman, WideOrbit Chief Technology Officer

In today’s rapidly evolving media landscape, the rise of streaming and digital platforms has transformed how advertising is sold and delivered. While the proliferation of content delivery options offers new revenue opportunities, each also comes with its own tools, data, and workflows. The resulting silos make it challenging for media companies to maximize those opportunities.

This level of fragmentation leads to inefficiency, redundant work, and missed revenue. But with the right approach to technology, one built on open architecture, interoperability, and meaningful integrations, media organizations can streamline operations, maximize the value of their tech stack, and position themselves for long-term growth.

The Fragmented State of Media Advertising

Media advertising can no longer be confined to the overly simplistic categories of linear or digital. Today’s buyers expect media campaigns to reach audiences across linear TV, streaming, mobile, audio, and digital channels.

To meet these expectations, media companies depend on increasingly complex software ecosystems. These tools support every stage of the advertising process, from customer relationship management (CRM) and sales planning to campaign execution, billing, and analytics. But many of these systems are isolated, making it difficult to effectively share data and coordinate workflows.

What Do We Mean by Open Architecture, Interoperability, and Integrations?

To address the complexity created by isolated systems, advertising technology providers must embrace three essential principles:

• Open Architecture: Software designed specifically to make connecting with external platforms and tools easy.
• Interoperability: The ability for different systems to work together seamlessly, exchanging data and functions without friction.
• Integrations: The specific connections, often through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), that allow tools to share data and workflows to eliminate redundant tasks and improve efficiency.

These principles have the potential to unify the advertising ecosystem, reduce complexity, and enable more efficient operations.

The Modern Media Ad Tech Stack

Media organizations use a wide range of tools to manage advertising from end to end. These include:

• CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot to manage customer relationships and sales pipelines
• Buyside and programmatic platforms to manage automated ad buying and delivery
• Cross-platform sales systems like WO Fusion to prepare proposals for increasingly fragmented inventory
• Trafficking systems such as WO Traffic and WO Network to manage scheduling, placement, and delivery of linear ads
• Digital order management platforms like WO Digital Hub to manage streaming and digital campaigns
• Audience measurement tools, such as Nielsen, Comscore, and iSpot, to validate campaign performance
• Ad servers such as Google Ad Manager, FreeWheel, and AdsWizz to execute digital campaigns
• Forecasting and analytics tools for revenue modeling and performance tracking
• Integration surfaces like WO Data Bridge and WideOrbit.io for access to data and bi-directional APIs for integrating systems
• Financial systems to manage reconciliation, billing, and accounts receivable
• AI tools to automate processes and drive real-time decision-making and optimization

Each tool adds value on its own, but that value can only be maximized through better integration and communication between platforms.

The Cost of Siloed Systems

Disconnected systems create bottlenecks at every stage of the advertising workflow, leading to operational challenges. Teams are often burdened with manual data entry and repetitive tasks, which slow down processes and increase the risk of human error and lost revenue. Responses to sales opportunities or campaign changes are delayed, making it difficult to stay competitive. These challenges are compounded when reporting is equally fragmented, limiting visibility across departments and hindering the timeliness and accuracy of performance tracking. Taken all together, these issues reduce efficiency, lead to lost revenue, and impede organizational agility in a fast-moving marketplace.

The Business Case for Integration

When systems work together, media organizations gain measurable advantages across their operations. Citing analysts like Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, Software AG reports that integrated systems can reduce operational costs by up to 30%, increase productivity by as much as 25%, and reduce data errors and inconsistencies by up to 40%.

How does integration achieve those results? Reducing manual steps improves efficiency, allowing teams to close deals and execute campaigns more quickly. Revenue opportunities grow through more accurate inventory forecasting and faster responses to RFPs. Collaboration becomes easier, with sales, operations, and finance teams all able to access and work from the same shared data. Decision-making also improves, backed by unified insights and performance metrics that are more reliable. Integration goes beyond simplifying day-to-day tasks; it empowers teams to shift their focus from manual, administrative tasks to consultative sales, strategy, and innovation.

Real-World Impact: Interoperability is Now

Interoperability is already delivering value for media companies. For example:

• Connecting WO Fusion, WO Digital Hub, and WO Traffic creates a seamless workflow for unified ad sales, campaign execution and reconciled billing across platforms.
• Integrating audience measurement tools such as Nielsen, Comscore, VideoAmp, and iSpot helps enable impression- and ratings-based planning and selling for linear, digital, and cross-platform campaigns.
• Syncing CRM and buyside platforms with WO Fusion streamlines sales workflows but also gives sellers and planners a complete view into customer activity, historical and present, to identify opportunities.
• Enabling more accurate forecasting, reporting, and intelligent campaign optimization, using:
  • WO Data Bridge to store, transform, and map data from multiple systems, along with:
  • WideOrbit.io APIs to provide data to and interact with AI tools and analytics platforms.

WideOrbit’s Commitment to Openness and Connectivity

WideOrbit is dedicated to building technology that connects rather than confines. Our approach prioritizes collaboration, customer flexibility, and long-term success over vendor lock-in, with solutions that offer data access and management, as well as APIs that enable both custom and pre-built integrations.

WO Data Bridge: A cloud-based data pipeline that simplifies data delivery to business intelligence, analytics, and AI tools.

WideOrbit.io: A portfolio of APIs to support seamless, real-time, bi-directional interaction between systems.

WideOrbit Connectors: Pre-built integrations with third-party platforms that reduce the complexity of connecting systems, such as CRM systems, buyside/agency systems, and more.

Building a Smarter, More Agile Ad Sales Operation

As the advertising landscape continues to evolve, one thing remains clear. Media companies need flexible, integrated solutions that eliminate silos and support efficient, scalable growth.

Open architecture and interoperability are not just technical features; they are strategic business requirements. Choosing technology providers who share these principles is essential to staying competitive and future-ready, empowering you and your teams to drive both efficiency and revenue.

If you’re ready to modernize your ad operations without starting from scratch, WideOrbit can help you connect the dots, building on your existing infrastructure to create smarter, more connected ad sales and operations.

Contact us to learn how.