New FatTail Research Shows Publishers Battle Rising Transaction Costs Despite the Move Towards Automated Buying Systems

100% of Executives Surveyed Describe “Nirvana” as Allowing Teams to do Higher Value Activities

FatTail, an enterprise advertising technology company built to power the premium market for publishers, unveiled new data that shows publishers continue to be burdened by manual and time-consuming processes, creating a distraction for highly skilled teams who should be more focused on incremental revenue opportunities.

Conducted in conjunction with Beeler.Tech, which focuses on connecting people, creating conversations, and bringing efficiency to digital media and ad tech, and CoLab Media Consulting, a specialist media consulting and market research business, the study surveyed senior revenue and ad operations professionals at leading publishers, to gain a deeper understanding of their thoughts on where technology can support greater internal efficiency while maintaining the human touch required to develop deeper advertiser relationships.

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One of the key takeaways is that even with a shift to more “automated” buying channels, there is a high cost of delivery that materially impacts publisher margins.

83% of respondents from businesses 250MM+ / annum agreed that “nirvana” is best characterized as “allowing my team to do higher value activities.”

“Superior customer service doesn’t need to imply higher operating costs,” said FatTail CEO Doug Huntington. “It shouldn’t be a choice. The goal should be instantaneous information, same day processing, and near zero transaction costs.”

Reducing overhead is critical

In the third quarter of 2020, FatTail, CoLab and Beeler.Tech collected data from a group of more than 95 global publishers, whose combined annual revenues topped roughly $10 billion in 2019.

“When we interviewed respondents to discuss the transactional friction, the message was loud and clear,” said Rob Beeler, CEO & Founder of Beeler.Tech. “As an industry, we are paying highly skilled revenue leaders to do menial work that could be automated, distracting them from the strategic work that will help the company or industry move forward.”

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Key survey highlights include:

• 60% of respondents agree ‘there is not enough time or resources to service customers in the way that they expect or that the business demands’
• 65% of respondents agree it is challenging to get information from siloed teams or systems
• Creative management stands out as a pain point that is both highly time-consuming (36% of respondents agree) and challenging (of respondents 22% agree)
• Less challenging but highly time-consuming are: client status (35% agree), client communication (31%) and campaign reporting (28%)
• 92% of respondents said that the majority of communication with their advertising partners occurs over email.

“Too often in our industry, campaigns are managed with high-touch administrative tasks that do not have a meaningful impact. Tools that allow our teams to focus on high-value tasks, are necessary for both our clients and employee retention,” said Ryan Whittington, SVP, American City Business Journals. “The ability to grow and scale our business without adding additional overhead is imperative to our future success.”

To solve these issues once and for all, FatTail believes self-service should be as much about direct access to information and automating intercompany workflow as it is about offering incremental revenue channels. By empowering advertisers with “do-it-yourself” tools, publishers can tackle the repeatable, “easy-to-automate” steps and significantly reduce transaction costs.

When asked about what plans to solve the customer support and service issues identified, 42% of publishers said, “there are other priorities requiring greater attention.” Outsourcing or limiting client expectations were seen as the second most popular way to address this pain point.

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