open square: a new meeting place and trading space for Rai Pubblicità’s clients

This week’s egtabite features an innovative sales platform deployed by Rai Pubblicità, the sales house for public TV and radio in Italy. open square is an interactive tool that combines CRM, inventory booking, presentation of the company’s channel portfolio and offers, customer service and an advertising market community that connects Rai Pubblicità to its clients – as the promise says, “our inventory inside your pocket!”

open square was presented in the radio session at egta’s 2016 Marketing & Sales Meeting in Budapest.

Combining social with sales

open square's starting point is the focus on Rai Pubblicità’s customers. The platform, which was developed in partnership with the cloud computing company Salesforce, goes beyond a traditional CRM tool, combining social media-style communication with the opportunity to review available products and offers and to buy inventory on the sales house’s channels. Initially available by invitation for major agency clients only, open square currently offers information about Rai’s television and radio programmes, the sales house’s commercial offers, a social space for advertising professionals to connect with each other and the possibility to buy “last minute” TV and radio inventory.

It should be noted that open square is not a programmatic buying platform, and there is no price bidding on inventory. Prices are pre-fixed in negotiated deals with agencies, making the model more analogous to Amazon, for example, than to eBay.

open square was designed to deliver an enhanced customer service to Rai Pubblicità’s clients, who can now find the best available offers for high quality advertising inventory quickly and efficiently. Clients can also access post-campaign results and analyses, helping them to better understand the impact of their advertising investments with Rai. A data-driven project, open square draws on resources across the company’s departments, including the teams of marketing and communication, information technology, sales and sales support. Clients can also make real time requests and connect to the sales house’s customer service, and the ultimate objective is to increase client satisfaction, loyalty and retention.

An evolving project

As it evolves, open square will offer a more diverse and complex set of services to Rai Pubblicità’s clients. In the development phases to come, clients will gain access to radio, cinema and digital inventory, targeting packages for television, cross-media planning and a delivery dashboard. Top clients will also be able to benefit from a Platinum service offer.

When fully developed, Rai Pubblicità expects to make its entire inventory accessible through open square, and the service will be 100% automated.

Why this matters for egta members

With the move towards greater automation in advertising sales, and an increased focus on data-driven trading, it is all too easy to relegate the human element of a sales house’s work to the benches. open square is a great example of how technical innovations can be combined with the expertise of specialist media professionals to increase accessibility to inventory through online sales tools, offering new opportunities for the advertising community to interact, gain knowledge of a broadcaster’s portfolio and buy inventory.

If you would like to know more about this topic, stay tuned for egta's overview of booking systems and workflow that will be published on our website next week. Contact [email protected] if you are interested in this topic.