Custom Development as an Alternative to Major Vendor Tools for Advertising Analytics: A Case Study at NBC Universal

Having up-to-date and easy access to key financial performance metrics is essential, especially in the fast-paced media business where trends can change on a daily basis.  With all of the capability available with current technology, no media executive should lack the ability to instantly access a key rating or advertiser sales figure.

How does an organization most effectively acquire this capability when it doesn’t exist? A common approach is to evaluate the major vendors and tools on the market and then select the vendor/tool that seems to be the best fit.

In the late 1990s, NBC recognized the need to provide a sales and ratings analytics web portal to senior executives to reduce the amount of effort and time required to compile key metrics.

A key driver for the portal was meeting executive analytic needs for NBC’s sponsorship of the 2002 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece where executives would be overseas and would rely on the Internet to gain easy access to daily metrics.  The solution had to be ready within a matter of months.

Prior attempts at providing an executive dashboard had been built around large vendor tools and construction of a comprehensive data warehouse to provide enterprise access to a very broad set of data: all data was made available to everyone in a kind of “shotgun” approach.  Each of the attempts, though successful by some accounts, failed to meet the specific needs of key senior executives.  The projects became weighed down by hundreds of requirements as the scope of the efforts expanded, involving more people and pushing the limits of the technology. In fact, this is often a side-effect of purchasing enterprise tools from large vendors.  Because the tools are necessarily broad in their capabilities, the effort to implement them becomes expansive and some of the initial focus is lost.

The series of “failed” efforts using various enterprise business intelligence tools coupled with the urgency to meet pressing reporting requirements created an opportunity to consider alternative strategies.  The team decided that creating a set of custom tools, starting small and building as needed, seemed like an approach worth trying.

The project team worked with an outside consulting firm (Brady and Associates) and began by identifying key short-term goals that were readily achievable, the first being a web-based report of all advertising network sales by customer, agency and daypart.  Once the initial goals were achieved, the project focused on building on the initial success in measured increments.  Ratings, detailed sales drill downs by time period and many variations of each basic metric were eventually added.

Taking a more focused and incremental approach using custom development, the team was able to deliver the most important data and features and avoid spending time on non-critical requirements.  The incremental approach to new features also helped identify issues that were not apparent in the beginning of the project.  For example, the original larger efforts had focused on obtaining advertiser contract data, but had included only booked contracts.  It wasn’t until the system went live that the team realized the importance of including current contract data. Unfortunately, the realization came at a time when including the current contract data required major rework.  In the custom, incremental approach to building the portal, these types of realizations happened continually because working software was put in use within the first month of the project, so feedback was provided early and often.

Custom, incremental development of media analytic applications is worth considering in many scenarios.  With focused and specific goals in mind and the right development partner, success can be achieved quickly and at low cost.

Brady and Associates constructed a custom, web-based executive advertising sales and ratings portal for NBC Universal in 2001-2002.  There are many other considerations to take into account when undertaking such an effort, such as integration with existing systems, ongoing maintenance and support.  Please contact us to begin a discussion about your Business Intelligence needs.