NAB 2024: Imagine Communications Rolls Out Order Management System, Traffic Solution for U.S. Broadcasters

Imagine Communications (Booth W2467) will have a hands-on demonstration of the first fully integrated and real-time order management system (OMS) plus traffic solution for the U.S. broadcast industry. The groundbreaking solution is the latest advancement in Imagine’s continuing efforts to streamline automated advertising transactions and reduce costs for broadcasters via flexible, open ad tech architectures.

Making its NAB debut, Imagine CrossFlight is a comprehensive, cloud-based ad sales platform that enables North American broadcasters to streamline today’s complex sales processes and make more money in a shifting landscape. Integrating via open APIs with existing traffic systems, including Imagine’s widely deployed OSI traffic and billing solution for U.S. broadcasters, CrossFlight provides a modern, consolidated monetization platform that eliminates the time sales teams spend in non-productive, swivel-chair activity. On average, CrossFlight gives salespeople 20 percent more time every week for actual selling.

“North American broadcast companies face many challenges when it comes to ad sales — they have standalone legacy systems, cumbersome multi-step processes and little to no real-time, comprehensive platform visibility,” says Rob Malcolm, general manager, ad tech, at Imagine Communications. “These tech stack limitations have a quantifiable impact on the business; statistics show that salespeople typically spend less than 35% of the day actually selling.

“With CrossFlight, broadcasters have access to a modernized OMS unlike any other media sales management system, because it does more than streamline the front-end sales process for broadcasters — it also drives revenue growth.”

CrossFlight integrates all processes for selling inventory into one centralized platform. The ad sales team has easy access to orders and campaigns that are fed into traffic systems without the need for separate logins. Built-in pipeline management capabilities allow salespeople to easily manage prospects and customer accounts. Avail requests and proposals can be swiftly converted into orders or submissions for approval in just one step, empowering sales teams to move seamlessly from proposal to order approval in minutes instead of days. Once authorized, orders are automatically placed in traffic, eliminating duplicate entry.

With CrossFlight, media companies can drive overall average unit rate via dynamic pricing capabilities, which enable inventory to be sold at the best possible price point. Sales teams have visibility into current rates, inventory and approvals all in one place and can use live data to inform “right price” on inventory. These powerful, automated decisioning tools create efficiencies that give more selling time back to sales teams — and more selling time equals more revenue. For executive leadership, CrossFlight makes it easy to monitor this optimized sales performance via an interactive dashboard that provides visibility into pipeline, committed orders, top sellers, and how stations are performing against targets.

CrossFlight integrates seamlessly with customers’ existing traffic systems via open APIs, including TIP. An early adopter of TIP interfaces, Imagine continues to implement TIP API support in line with market readiness and paced by the availability of compatible third-party systems.

Malcolm added, “Imagine has long advocated that the OMS must represent the entire audience as a single view of inventory, rather than having siloed audiences across delivery platforms. As the industry continues to evolve, CrossFlight will empower exactly that view — designed to transform daily sales operations today, while continuing to develop to help customers successfully navigate a converged linear/digital future.”

At the 2024 NAB Show, Imagine will showcase its full portfolio of innovative Monetize TV solutions, which enable customers to reaggregate their audiences, maximize CTV yields, and accelerate the transition to revenue-driving new business models from linear addressable, FAST, programmatic and direct-sold ― all the way to Total TV trading.