As audiences consume media across more platforms than ever, advertisers are demanding outcome-driven, cross-platform campaign strategies. But fragmented and outdated ad tech stacks make it difficult for publishers to keep pace.

To move forward, publishers must adopt integrated solutions that streamline sales, order management, delivery and billing — enabling efficiency while unlocking new revenue.

Marc Brasset, President of Western Media Group, joined Andre Catarino, VP, Professional Services at WideOrbit, for a Digiday-sponsored webinar on October 21, 2025, to discuss how publishers and media organizations can simplify digital and cross-platform ad tech, streamline operations and drive growth.

During the webinar, Marc and Andre discussed the challenges publishers face in meeting cross-platform demand and how new technologies help unify fragmented ad tech, providing insights on the way forward from broadcaster and solution provider perspectives.

The Challenge

Publishers managing cross-platform campaigns face a complex array of challenges, driven by the fragmentation of media, rising buyer demands for accountability, and evolving monetization models.

Cross-platform campaign management challenges are systemic. They can be broken down into three main categories – People, Process, and Technology – and to meet those challenges, publishers must invest in ongoing training for their teams, redesign workflows for optimal efficiency, and upgrade their tech stacks.

People: Challenges

Limited cross-platform expertise: Teams are typically structured around, and experienced with, traditional media. There is often a lack of deep expertise in digital. In addition, linear and digital sales teams operate in silos, making coordination for cross-platform proposals inefficient.

Sales team alignment and training: Sales teams face challenges communicating the value of cross-platform offerings due to a lack of shared KPIs and an inadequate understanding of digital metrics. This is compounded by a resistance to change, with digital and traditional sellers taking an oppositional stance instead of collaborating.

Talent gaps in data and tech: Publishers often have difficulty attracting and retaining talent with modern ad tech backgrounds. The lack of experience and expertise with newer technology constrains innovation and scalability.

Solutions

Establish an R&D / Innovation team: Establish a dedicated team to review the ad tech stack and engage the right stakeholders. Use this team to recommend and implement a plan improve efficiency and maximize revenue by consolidating or upgrading systems to modern, integrated solutions (like WideOrbit).

With unified systems, publishers can reduce silos, improve the buyer experience, and increase efficiency.

Process: Challenges

Fragmented workflows: Booking, trafficking, and reporting across linear and digital are often managed in separate systems, using different processes. Additionally, manual reconciliation of campaigns is still common, leading to delays, errors, and client dissatisfaction.

Inefficient RFP response and campaign execution: Responding to buyer RFPs that span platforms is cumbersome due to inconsistent inventory packaging and pricing logic. Buyers expect faster turnaround and greater transparency than traditional processes can support.

Attribution and measurement inconsistencies: Disparate metrics (GRPs vs. impressions vs. conversions) and disconnected measurement providers hinder unified reporting and campaign optimization. Buyers increasingly expect outcome-based reporting (e.g., lift, attribution), which most publishers can’t deliver consistently across platforms.

Solutions

Workflow automation reduces manual effort and speeds order processing, freeing up time for teams to work on higher-value tasks.

Integrated solutions provide real-time tracking and monitoring of order status and performance, giving publishers visibility into campaign progress and outcomes. This allows for quick updates to advertisers when changes are needed.

End-to-end management helps publishers manage inventory more efficiently, optimize campaign execution, and deliver stronger outcomes for advertisers.

Technology: Challenges

Siloed systems and data: Core systems like order management, ad servers, data warehouses, and analytics tools are rarely well integrated. There’s no single source of truth for cross-platform campaign status, performance, or billing.

Limited automation and interoperability: Publishers often lack APIs with demand-side platforms (DSPs), agency planning tools, and third-party measurement vendors. Trafficking and optimizations require manual intervention, slowing time-to-market and reducing flexibility.

Audience and identity resolution: Publishers struggle to build unified audience profiles across platforms due to cookie deprecation, walled gardens, and data silos. This undermines the value proposition of targeting, frequency capping, and measurement.

Solutions

Integrated platforms unify ad sales, order management, fulfillment, and billing across digital and cross-platform campaigns. Integrations enable seamless data exchange between platforms and analytics for effective and efficient optimization.

Automation to streamline sales, finance, and inventory management to maximize yield and revenue.

Insights derived from integrated systemsempower publishers to improve targeting, stay ahead of trends, and deliver stronger advertiser outcomes.

Simplify Ad Tech, Streamline Operations, Drive Growth

To simplify the ad tech stack, success depends on alignment across People, Processes, and Technology, taking an integrated, step-by-step approach.

For People, it’s about building the right teams and fostering a culture of collaboration to break down silos. Sellers and planners should be empowered to sell what they want, when they want, while remaining unified to avoid fragmented efforts that can confuse the buyer experience.

From a Process standpoint, standardizing workflows and automating wherever possible helps reduce friction and improve efficiency.

And finally, on the Technology side, integrating and modernizing platforms, APIs, and data pipelines is essential to maximizing the value of your data and generating better insights. It’s also important that rather than out-of-the-box solutions, with all the limitations that term implies, publishers find technology vendors who will work with them to meet their unique needs.

Together, these elements create a more scalable, connected operation, from sales through to billing, ensuring greater alignment and efficiency across the entire business.

To hear Marc and Andre’s full conversation on strategies for simplifying ad ops to drive revenue, watch the webinar recording.

To learn more about WideOrbit’s full suite of digital and cross-platform solutions, please contact us.