Media Briefing: Publishers are feeling the pressure from advertisers to deliver more, faster

By Kayleigh Barber

This week’s media briefing explores the evolving relationship between publishers and advertisers as the pressure mounts to justify marketing budgets with actual proof of driving revenue.

Time crunch
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Time crunch

The key hits:

For some publishers, the time between receiving an RFP and executing a campaign has drastically shrunk at the request of eager advertisers.
The sales cycle for BDG has decreased by almost half, going from an average of 50-60 days to about 30 days.
Blavity Inc. has experienced agencies fighting back for more KPIs post-campaign, delaying the start of payment windows by days or even weeks.
To accommodate higher demand in their advertising businesses, hiring more pre- and post-sales roles has become a necessity.

In times of economic turmoil, like the current period that emerged this summer, advertisers have to balance smaller marketing budgets while still proving those campaigns’ efficacy. As a result, publishers are reporting that their clients have more demanding expectations with tighter timelines and stricter results they need to deliver.

BDG is pacing to be up 35% year over year in total revenue this year, after being up 31% in the first half of 2022, according to the company’s CRO and president Jason Wagenheim, and this is partially because the average deal size in its advertising revenue is up 15-20% year-over-year.

Despite wanting more, however, advertisers want to see the campaigns go live sooner, he said.

BDG’s average sale cycle – meaning the time between receiving a proposal request from an advertiser to signing a contract – has decreased from about 60 days to between 30 and 35 days, said Wagenheim. And then once a deal has closed, there is a shorter window allotted to BDG’s post-sale team to execute the campaign. Earlier in the year, campaigns went live an average of 12-16 weeks after signing a contract, but now, it’s closer to six to eight weeks, “if we’re lucky,” he said.

The Independent is experiencing a similar trend of clients wanting to execute faster and part of the reason is because they’re skipping the request for information (RFI) stage and skipping right to the request for proposal (RFP), meaning advertisers aren’t taking their time weighing other options nearly as much.

“We’re seeing a lot less RFIs and a lot more firmer RFP requests that can move quickly,” said Blair Tapper, The Independent’s svp of U.S.

Tapper declined to share the average length of the company’s sales cycle, but said fulfilling a campaign in six to eight weeks has become standard practice. This is preferred, however, she said, because, “truthfully, a 16-week RFP cycle is really hard on everybody. It drags on. So for us, the shorter the cycle, the better.”

High demands

A short sales cycle does not necessarily mean a swift and painless post-sale, or even post-campaign period, however.

Blavity Inc has added more than 50 new advertisers to its client roster this year, increasing its ad …read more

Source:: Digiday