A Digital Perspective From A Radio Manager

Walter Sabo is one of Radio’s elite executives with a resume a mile long. There was a time when Mr. Sabo was at the center of the industry, running the most prestigious radio stations in the US. He recently shared a post about hiring “Digital Sellers” for his radio colleagues. Five Secrets to Hiring Excellent Digital Sellers – RadioInfo : RadioInfo.

His post says, in a nutshell, that the reasons that traditional media sellers can’t sell online advertising are because the sellers are overqualified, they sell to buyers who know no rules, the measurement standards are not in place, they are poorly trained, and need more time. With thinking like that, it’s no wonder that more digital advertising isn’t sold by traditional media companies.

His article made me chuckle and reminded me that things still haven’t changed.

Here’s 3 ideas that have been around for about 10 years in digital advertising still not yet adopted by radio: CPM pricing, conversion tracking, and more recently, attribution. Digital sellers are held accountable to a result. Unfortunately that’s where traditional media has come up short on the digital front. In my humble opinion, radio execs’ time and energy would be better spend on upgrading their digital products to produce real results rather than focus on hiring sellers to hawk uninteresting advertising and promotional gadgets and products.