Yesterday, media sales planning and management platform company INVISION announced new debt-structured financing that “will support INVISION’s development and launch this year of the DealMaker Crossroad (DMC) … as well as DealMaker Digital, a comprehensive digital ad sales planning and management system.” Read the release.
INVISION CEO Lynda Clarizio, formerly head of Aol’s Platform-A, discussed the new financing and the digital product plans.
AdExchanger.com: Why choose debt financing for this round of funding as opposed to equity?
LC: We chose venture debt financing because we were able to obtain this financing at a lower cost of capital than equity financing; the terms also offered us significant operating flexibility as we move forward with the development and launch of our new products.
Looking at the competitive set, do you consider yourself in competition with Donovan Data Systems and MediaBank?
No, we do not consider ourselves competitive with Donovan and/or MediaBank. We are the leading provider of advertising planning and sales systems to the television industry – i.e., to sellers of television advertising. Now we are extending our business in two ways — with the separate launches later this year of DealMaker Digital, a digital ad sales planning and management system for sellers of digital advertising, and DealMaker Crossroad, an integrated sales and traffic system for the management of television operations. These products are being developed specifically for media providers who are sellers of advertising. To better serve our clients, we are always exploring ways to facilitate the buying and selling process, and would welcome the opportunity to partner with providers of advertising solutions targeted at buyers.
Are traditional clients demanding better cross-channel media buying capabilties – including digital – or you anticipating the need?
Our clients are interested in technology that facilitates cross-platform selling, from the operational benefits of streamlining reporting and system administration to the strategic advantages of unified proposal creation and inventory management. Some of our clients are exploring how online video advertising can be used to satisfy shortfalls in television advertising delivery. We believe that we are moving toward a world of multi-screen video advertising across television and online video, and we are developing the solutions to address this inevitable convergence.
What will you enable your clients to plan and manage in digital out of the gate with your upcoming digital DealMaker Digital product release? Mobile, video, display?
DealMaker Digital will enable the planning and sale of digital advertising across online video, display and mobile media and also will support addressable television advertising. We believe DealMaker Digital is the first sales system built to support how publishers manage their online inventory and advertising sales today. DealMaker Digital will handle proposal generation, contract management, inventory and rate card management as well as finance and invoicing. Our system will support distributed content and multiple targeting strategies, not just site-specific content. Built as an open platform, DealMaker Digital will facilitate integrations with the broad array of third parties with whom digital media providers partner to sell advertising, such as supply side platforms/pub optimizers, audience analytics providers and speciality ad servers. Selling digital advertising today is way more complex and time-consuming than it needs to be – we are bringing DealMaker Digital to market as a solution to simplify and expedite the sale of digital advertising.
By John Ebbert
