I ventured into this industry not to be a salesperson but to be an educator. To take problems, look at them differently, and come up with creative and innovative solutions. I wanted to push the boundaries of what is possible within the world of advertising and teach others about those possibilities.  

That meant an early start in digital, online video, programmatic, and now, broadcast radio.  

Wait, what? Broadcast radio?  

Yes, it's a 100-year-old medium, but one with 245 million weekly listeners (take that, Google and Facebook!) that is experiencing a renaissance as advertisers rediscover the power of radio.

Radio doesn’t have to take a backseat to the innovation happening around us. Long overlooked and put in a corner, while digital gets all the sexy innovation, publicity, and street cred, radio now has the technology to tackle legacy thought processes that made planning, buying, and reporting on radio difficult and approach them in a new and better way. Nobody needs to put Baby— or radio—in a corner any longer. 

And yet, change does not come easily, especially when you are a 100-year-old medium. When you look at Michael Lewis’s baseball book, “Money Ball,” the analytics people who were infiltrating the game were decried as heretics seemingly driving out the old-school scouts. 

Today, every team in every sport has multi-million dollar analytics department because they make the “beneath the surface” information that much more powerful. If you utilize that data correctly, it can be a powerful ally in the way you think about your business and even provide a competitive advantage.  

Audio, too, can ride the technological wave, utilizing data, analytics, transparency, and accountability to drive operational efficiencies in very much the same way that baseball has redefined its game.

Reintroducing Radio

For broadcast radio, that means new, revolutionary ways to think about planning, buying, selling, and conducting radio business. When using a technology platform like Jelli’s DSP and SSP, gone are the days when:

• It took 90 days to figure out if there was a need for a make good on your radio buy (you can now know in real-time).
• Agencies needed to have advance notice of at least 6 weeks to plan a radio buy in order to execute it (you can now plan in real-time with no notice).
• You needed a week to verify if the correct creative ran (yup, real-time). Or when it took 3 weeks to collect a post log (done now in, you guessed it, real-time).

You can even plan a buy utilizing digital practices like audience targeting, or find efficiencies by running outside of standardized day-parts.  

It’s all a fun challenge, blazing new trails despite serious obstacles like inertia, legacy, and fear of trying something new. Remember when you bought your first smartphone and you had no idea how the heck to use it? It even took me an extra year to give up my Blackberry because I didn't want to get out of my comfort zone. Now we can't live without them. 

All new technologies require time and patience to become an expert. Nobody says we should go back to riding horses because we don't see the benefits of learning how to drive a car. But, just like driving schools or Apple's Genius Bar, Jelli is here to help teach you how to expedite your buying process by using a much-needed industry platform.

The thing to remember is that technological advancements do exist, even in broadcast radio. And with innovation comes opportunity. Now that the audio revolution is upon us, the important question to answer is this: Are you going to embrace it? 

About the author: Rich Knopke comes to Jelli with 20 years experience in digital. Rich has a track record of driving revenue growth and building successful teams for leading media giants and successful startups. He was most recently Chief Revenue Officer at Genesis Media where he was responsible for all managed service and programmatic revenue for the company. Prior to Genesis, Rich was Senior Vice President of Sales at Gannett/USA TODAY and also held leadership positions with the digital divisions at NBC Universal and The Wall Street Journal. Most notably, he helped build revenue and the sales team at Tremor Video, which ultimately led the company to IPO.