On Cloud Nine

This week’s egtabite puts the spotlight on an innovative solution launched by CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions to automate the management of TV broadcast traffic instructions through a cloud-based service - a first in the North American TV marketplace. In their continued strive towards automation, both sides of the Canadian public broadcaster’s sales house (anglophone and francophone) partnered with software provider NeverCryWolf (NCW) to implement this major technological change to the Canadian TV traffic instruction process, a first since the transition from fax to email nearly two decades ago.

CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions first adopted Cloud Traffic, the NeverCryWolf software in late 2016. In 2017, the pubcaster began testing it with IPG Mediabrands on a pilot project. Now, following the positive results, it is live for all ad buyers.

The silver lining for advertisers

NCW’s Cloud Traffic service provides a fully automated way for an advertiser’s TV commercials to be assigned to spots in CBC & Radio-Canada’s schedule. The new solution eliminates most constraints on managing changes by advertisers and reduces greatly human error possibilities. This is a great step forward for the North American TV marketplace, which until now has relied on highly manual, non-standardised processes for this critical function. Now buyers and agencies can manage the traffic instructions directly from their desk.

The new process allows buyers to input instructions such as the rotation of the creative, the scheduling and frequency of different ads and other details. Up until now, this was all left up to human interpretation. In the past, multi-brand contracts used to be common practice for sales houses in Canada. A lot of brands have since moved away from that to split up their buys in order to make the instructions easier, which meant that buyers and sellers had to deal with multiple processes and multiple contracts. This software can allow advertisers to go back to the multi-brand contracts, which is far more efficient to manage.

While addressable and programmatic television are not yet implemented on the Canadian market, NeverCryWolf’s software creates a solid foundation for advanced television. Cloud Traffic represents an absolutely crucial and foundational component for realising the full benefits of advanced TV initiatives coming to market. With this modern, agile service, marketers, agencies and media owners will be better positioned to realise more value in the marketplace.

Toward the future

“The industry is in need of a revolution,” says Andrea Laton, Senior Director of Strategic Operations at CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions. “Until now, the only technological change over the past 40 years to how broadcasters manage Canadian TV traffic instructions was the transition from fax to email – over 15 years ago. Through our partnership with NCW, advertisers can now send their traffic instructions through secure, fully-auditable, cloud-based software, which standardises the information we need, assigns commercials directly to our schedule, and automatically identifies any discrepancies upfront. We are excited that CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions is taking a leadership role as the marketplace evolves and TV technology continues to change.”

Over the next year, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions is looking forward to an increased use of NCW Cloud Traffic by its agency partners, working with NCW on further technological development, and an expanded scope with the company. NCW is actively working with other major media owners to leverage the benefits of Cloud Traffic for their advertisers.