iHeartMedia

Global media company iHeartMedia maximizes revenue stream in less than 1 week

Background

iHeartMedia is the #1 audio company in the United States, reaching 9 out of 10 Americans every month – and with its quarter of a billion monthly listeners, has a greater reach than any other media company in the U.S. iHeartMedia also leads the audio industry in analytics and attribution technology for its marketing partners, using data from its massive consumer base.

Challenge

iHeartMedia needed a scalable application to meet the needs of their complex and demanding Endorsement business. Specifically, an application to enable users to efficiently search, book and manage qualified DJ talent for paid on-air Endorsement opportunities. Historically, each market segment had its process for documenting Endorsements for radio DJ Talent in each market, using Excel spreadsheets or Word documents. For large multi-market Campaigns, there was no way to determine which Talent was available for their business needs, often leading to missed revenue opportunities. Projects under tight deadlines were not set up for success as it often took weeks to lock in an Endorsement, resulting in missed revenue. In addition, there was no process to track or report on Endorsement revenue or forecast its value to executive management.

Solution

In 38 hours, an Endorsement application was built, connecting to 4 of iHeart’s cloud-based data sources and 1 on-premise server without a single line of code. Every market now enters all Talent data and availability into the new Vinyl application. The Endorsement app enables teams to provide Advertisers and Campaign Managers options for Talent Endorsements within seconds, eliminating their prior issue that led to missed revenue. Automated Workflow emails notify users of requests, schedule details, bookings, category conflict of interest and contract confirmations. Notes and a detailed history of every campaign are now archived in the app, providing the business with a record of all past Endorsements and overall trends. The new application also tracks and reports Endorsement revenue streams to aid management in future revenue projections and forecasting.

Solution Technologies

• Allowed sellers to capitalize on undersold endorsement categories
• Provided ability to monitor and track Endorsement revenue stream
• Implemented real-time data analytics to measure impact and reach
• Developed centralized business workflow for all campaigns
• Standardized business process across all markets
• Enabled quantification of Endorsements per Talent