Brave new back-office management
device for newspapers and magazines
Virtuosity of the online world is now more real and practical than
ever imagined. 5 Fifteen is a virtual instance. Rod Fenwick,
co-founder and MD, 5 Fifteen unfolds all facts and competencies
about ad DEPOT, a collaborative advertising sales management, analytics and native CRM
integration for multi-channel companies to streamline advertising sales management and
managing back-office functions for newspaper and magazine publishers.
Participants at ppi Media's 14th Open Days.
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Q: Describe the market(s) you serve.
Rod: We serve the back-office systems
requirement of advertising order processing/
accounts receivable and billing. We have
customers in the UK, USA, Scandinavia and
Holland ranging from very small, such as Dog
World, through to very large like Schibsted,
the fourth largest newspaper publisher on
the planet.
Q: What issues are your customers/publishers
facing? What impact are these issues having
on their businesses?
Rod: Generally speaking, the decline in print
advertising revenues has not been replaced
with digital income – all of our customers are
juggling that particular ball. The advertising
recessions of the past fifteen years have been
well documented and the simple result is that
our customers always need to do more with less.
At present, print isn’t trendy so marketers
and agencies aren’t thinking about it as much
as about digital media, but the fact remains
that established publishers get the majority of
their revenue from print advertising, not from
digital. The print media sector is still in a
phase of very rapid change, which means there
is continuing consolidation, and we’ve also
seen consolidation in the vendor community.
We saw that the way to help publishers cope
with falling revenues was to streamline the
back-office functions, enabling fewer people
to do more; reduce errors, automate processes
and dramatically cut costs. We see a move
towards the cloud – and are using cloud-based
systems ourselves. Data security – at least in
this market – is becoming less of an issue
and clients trust the availability of solutions
from Salesforce, Amazon and Microsoft. Noone
asks about reliability or resilience any
more. Moreover, tangible ROI from reduction
of internal IT impacts our customers business
in a positive way commercially. Most of our
customers are prepared to sacrifice overlycomplex
workflows and business processes in
return for solutions that remove the reliance on
proprietary software and specialist knowledge.
Q: How have the activities of ad booking/
placement changed?
Rod: Today, there is a greater emphasis on
lifetime value of a client, which requires
considerably improved functionality,
traditionally served by CRM solutions such as
Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.com. Users
of those technologies expect seamless integration
and a matching user interface. Technically,
the process of ad booking/placement is more
challenging – there are numerous ad-serving
technologies for example, which need to be
delivered without adding complexity to the
overall selling process.
Q: How does 5 Fifteen help periodical/
newspaper publishers? How does it perform
better?
Rod: Providing a solution that enables sales
teams to focus on selling and contacting
prospects, rather than on administration
and clerical work, is key to increasing the
lifetime value and transaction value of every
prospect they touch. We provide efficient
order processing; packaging digital and print
advertising together accurately and simply
which is our constant aim.
Q: What are the advantages of ad DEPOT?
How does it help publisher manage their
advertising?
Rod: We deliver collaborative advertising
sales management, analytics and native CRM
integration specifically for multi-channel media
companies. Whether you are searching for
key account information, monitoring sales
performance, analysing trends or managing
workflow, ad DEPOT ensures increased
productivity through its familiar intuitive web
browser interface. Every department can access
specific information while at the same time
maintaining an overview of the whole operation.
Q: 5 Fifteen and ad DEPOT have moved
towards a Cloud-based SaS (Software as a
Service) model. Can you tell us how that
works and what the benefits are?
Rod: ad DEPOT is built predominantly
on the Microsoft technology stack, so it
was natural for us to look at Microsoft
as being our cloud partner. The
Azure platform is comprehensive, powerful,
scalable and inexpensive and backed by one
of the most experienced technology partners on
the planet. It has applicability for publishers,
large and small, and provides compelling ROI
when compared to internal hardware and
staffing requirements.
Q: Can you explain its cost-effectiveness
as a tool?
Rod: You pay for what you use: disk storage,
memory, back up and redundancy strategy
all for a modest monthly fee. If you don’t
work weekends, you don’t pay. Azure can
be configured in a matter of minutes and
ad DEPOT simply sits on top. Turn on and
use – it’s that simple. Some customers like to
manage the Azure platform themselves, others
are happy to let us monitor it for them.
Q: How are the needs of magazine different
from those of newspapers? How can you
accommodate this?
Rod: In the past few years, I have seen those
needs converging. Both sets of publishers have
to provide improved services to their clients,
hence the dominance of CRM solutions such as
Salesforce.com in our marketplace. Historically,
there were differences in terms of sheer volume,
mix of advertising types, automation and
complexity of workflows. Now the differences
tend to be geographically based. For example, we
have worked extensively with Hearst Magazines
in New York to provide hierarchical account
management, sales assignments and other
features/functions specific to doing business in
the USA. Likewise, using the same codebase,
we have been working with Schibsted, in
Norway, for the past year or so providing an
AdsML workflow that has consolidated five
separate business units into one.
Q: You must watch the publications market
very closely. The common picture is one of
gloom and doom. Can you cheer us up?
Rod: I don’t understand the propensity
for doom and gloom to be the prevalent
thinking. There is nothing permanent except
change. Whilst digital local advertising has
not proven sustainable there continues to be
innovation such as native advertising and
video advertising. Those with fluid business
models and able to make tough decisions
based on cold commercial reality will win
out. Our industry is going through a period
of rapid change; broadband penetration
combined with a multitude of new devices
for delivering digital content has led an
increasing number of consumers to switch
from traditional print media to digital media.
Content creation in particular has exploded,
which has given consumers more choices
than ever before. My children thankfully
consume more content from a wider variety
of sources than I ever did. It’s just in a
different form and generally doesn’t get
thrown on the fire.
Q: What are successful publishers doing?
Rod: Successful publishers are facing up to
the commercial reality I just mentioned. They
are continuing to invest, which isn’t always
easy. With attitudes that are broadly in favour
of digital rather than print, it’s very difficult to
get investment in print-related systems. What
is often overlooked is that new print systems
aren’t just for print, but for digital media as
well. These buying cycles are very long, too,
so if the opportunity for investment is missed,
then it could be a decade or more before it’s
looked at again – assuming the publisher is
still in business. Successful publishers are
taking the tough, bold decisions and investing
in tomorrow.
Q: What are 5 Fifteen’s plans for the future?
Rod: We were one of the first companies to
introduce a web-based advertising solution
back in 2007. We continue to innovate. We
see advertisers focusing on a mix of digital
platforms and online tools to engage with
and measure ever-changing behaviour of
their consumers. Publishers and advertisers in
turn, are more sophisticated about their use
of technology than ever before. We need to
respond accordingly by providing ever-more
sophisticated solutions to their requirements.
With all the changes taking place in this
industry, embracing a strategic, forward-looking
digital business model is critical to success–and
survival–but not at the expense of our rich
print heritage.
We have a five-year plan of development that
looks at continued enhancements for our current
offerings while at the same time introducing
other advertising technologies that will extend
our sales and geographic reach. We are about
to introduce the first in a series of native
Salesforce.com applications, which builds on our
AdsML expertise in particular and the sector
in general. During 2014 we will continue to
build out natively on that platform, introducing
industry specific booking and workflow
solutions as well as commerce finance and billing
applications for the advertising community.
