Until he retired in 2002, Charlie was Vice President of AOL’s Interactive Marketing division. Before joining AOL, he was the Goldenson Endowed Professor at the Missouri Journalism School for 10 years where he taught media management, media economics and finance, and media sales, and where he created and ran the annual Management Seminar for News Executives.
Charlie has also served as a management and sales consultant and trainer for CBS, ABC, ESPN, MTV, TCI, Fox, AH Belo, Hearst Magazines, Microsoft’s MSN, Cox Cable, The Hyperfactory, and many other major media and online companies. He has also been VP, General Manager, of WNBC‐AM (now WFAN) in New York, WMAQ‐AM (now WSCR) and WKQX‐FM in Chicago, WWSW‐AM and WPEZ‐FM in Pittsburgh, and CBS Radio Spot Sales.
William A. Lederer co‐founded and serves as Chairman and CEO of iSOCRATES, the Global leader in Programmatic Resource Planning and Execution™ that serves publishers, marketers, agencies, and their suppliers. iSOCRATES has two lines of business: Strategic and Operations Consulting and Managed Services (Managed Service Platforms and Business Process Outsourcing). The company is owned by its employees, is headquartered in Saint Petersburg, Florida, and has its global delivery center in Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
Previously, Bill founded and served as Chairman and CEO of MediaCrossing Inc., a pioneering programmatic media trading company. Prior to MediaCrossing, he was CEO, Kantar Video, a global online and mobile video data, measurement and analytics innovation unit of Kantar, a global media and market research holding company of WPP Group. He also served as a board member of WPP Digital and of Kantar Digital. Bill had been Global Chief Development Officer and COO of North America at Kantar Media Audiences (formerly, TNS Media Research), and earlier VP, Corporate Development at Kantar Media (formerly, TNS Media NA). He was the Founder of Art.com, the leading e‐commerce retailer, which he sold to Getty Images where he led as CEO of its Consumer Division.
Bill is an Adjunct Professor in the graduate Media Management Program in the School of Media Studies, The New School in New York. He is author or co‐author of four Wiley texts on media selling or finance, including this 5th edition of Media Selling.
Brian Moroz is a senior creative strategist at Google. He has held several positions there during his decade‐plus tenure both in the sales and agency groups and in the sales training group where he led North American new hire training in New York for all new employees.
Brian has particular expertise in strategic planning for complex online marketing campaigns and is expert in online video, search, and display as well as emerging technology in the digital media space. His current focus is on understanding how Google users interact with and take value from online marketing.
Previous to his work at Google, Brian worked in a postgraduate MBA startup and in finance. He has worked in the US and in Europe with consulting roles in Asia and was an Adjunct Professor in the graduate Media Management Program at The New School in New York.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to Haze Humbert, former Wiley Executive Editor, who urged me to write a fifth edition of Media Selling and to current Executive Editor, Todd Green, who has been so patient and supportive through several missed deadlines. Kudos to Wiley project manager Ajith Kumar and to the meticulous copy‐editor Katherine Carr for making me seem like a much better writer than I really am.
Buckets of kudos and thanks go to my two co‐authors, Bill Lederer and Brian Moroz; a fifth edition of Media Selling would not have been possible without their insights and expertise. And thanks to Scott Pompe of the Austin American‐Statesman for his multiple insights into best practices in local cross‐platform selling, to John Zimmer of Zimmer Marketing Group for his team’s insights in local cross‐platform selling, to Leo MacCourtney of Katz Television, to Tim Warner (no relation) of WRTH‐TV in Indianapolis, and to Zorik Gordon, co‐founder of Reach Local for being so candid in my interviews with them. Also, thanks to Will Warner for designing some of the coolest graphics in the book.
The book was also guided by the thoughtful reviews of several of my academic colleagues, and I would like to thank them for their efforts and encouragement.
Charles Warner
New York, August 2019
Preface
Updating the fourth edition of Media Selling, published in 2009, has been challenging because of the exponential changes in the media, especially in digital advertising, which in 2016 toppled television as the numberone advertising medium, and in the time since the fourth edition, Google and Facebook have dominated the digital advertising media environment. In 2017 and 2018 the two Internet giants amassed approximately 90 percent of the increase in digital advertising investment over the previous year, leaving hundreds of thousands of advertising‐supported websites and apps struggling to survive by dividing the crumbs of the remaining 10 percent of the digital advertising yearly increase. It is difficult to keep up with accelerating changes in the media and in advertising because these changes are driven mostly by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), but this edition includes many of the changes up until August of 2019. With that in mind, we (the authors) have tried to avoid predicting the future beyond 2019. We have included a list of the most relevant references at the end of each chapter. We have also provided a list of resources that includes the URLs of websites and industry newsletters, blogs, apps, and websites where readers can keep up to date on current information.
Focus of the Book
Media Selling focuses on several basic concepts:
Selling media has changed irreversibly since the advent of Google’s self‐serve Ad Words (called Google Ads from July 24, 2018) and the rise of programmatic buying and selling of media ad inventory. In 2019, over 80 percent of all digital inventory (desktop and mobile) was bought by computer‐to‐computer online programmatic trading. There are now two basic types of media selling: (1) in person, or via Skype or FaceTime, face‐to‐face educating, on which this book focuses and (2) programmatic trading, which is covered in a separate chapter. People selling legacy media (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and out‐of‐home) today must understand both their own medium and the complexity of programmatic, including a basic knowledge of programmatic’s underlying ecosystem and technology because virtually all of the legacy media, both nationally and locally, are sold on a cross‐platform basis that includes a digital component.
Personal selling without tricks or manipulation – with authenticity – is essential in order to build and maintain relationships based on trust.
The imperative of honesty, integrity, and ethics in selling in this era of government, corporate, and media misdeeds and erosion of confidence in the media, and in this new era of social media in which it is virtually impossible to erase the digital footprint of misdeeds or impulsive comments.
Attitudes control successful sales performance, and attitudes are controllable by using sound goals and objectives to motivate salespeople and help them achieve their dreams.
Developing emotional and social intelligence – self‐awareness, self‐management, social awareness, and relationship management – is necessary for success in educating customers and helping them.
Solution and insight educating and selling means selling solutions to marketing and advertising problems.
Because some of the in‐person business in the media is still conducted by means of negotiating, today’s successful media salespeople must be competent negotiators.
Understanding the basic concepts of marketing and