Traffic and billing software: what it is and what it has to get right

Traffic and billing — the sell side of broadcast advertising software, and the half of a broadcast management system that faces the advertiser rather than the transmission. The two words name two jobs: traffic places sold spots into the schedule and gets the right creative to air in the right place, and billing turns what actually aired into an invoice the buyer will pay. They are one system in every serious product for the same reason they are one phrase — an invoice is only defensible if it is drawn from the airings, and the airings are only correct if the placement was.

OpenMediaLogic does traffic and billing for TV, radio and DOOH in one system, and holds the buyer's side in the same record. It is deployable in any market and live today in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, where 200+ media brands use it.

What traffic actually does

Traffic sounds clerical and is a constraint problem that changes every day. A booked spot cannot simply be dropped into the next free position; it has to satisfy every rule the sale and the regulator attached to it:

• Competitive separation — two advertisers from the same category kept apart, usually by a minimum gap and often within the same break entirely
• Product and time restrictions — categories that may not air before a watershed, in or around particular programming, or at all in certain dayparts
• Clearance — copy approved before it can be scheduled, where the market or the broadcaster requires it, with the approval attached to the specific version
• Creative versions and regional splits — the right cut, language and regional variant to the right transmission, which on a network with opt-outs multiplies quickly
• Rotation and distribution — a booking bought as a share of a window placed evenly across it rather than bunched, and separated from the advertiser's own other spots
• Re-placement — every one of the above re-solved when the schedule moves, which it does: a programme overruns, a news special displaces an hour, a campaign is cancelled on the day

The last one is what makes it software rather than a checklist. Solving the placement once is a morning's work; solving it again every time the schedule changes, without breaking a rule or losing a spot, is not something a spreadsheet survives.

What billing has to get right

Billing runs on evidence, not on the order. The chain is: the as-run log from playout, an affidavit attesting to it, reconciliation of planned against aired, any makegood settled, and only then the invoice and the closing documents.

Three records have to agree at the end of it — what was sold, what aired, and what was invoiced. In most media companies they live in three places, or in one system and two spreadsheets, and almost every billing dispute in this business is a disagreement between those three records rather than an argument about price. It also explains the failure nobody reports: spots that aired and were never invoiced look exactly like spots that were never booked, so the revenue goes missing silently.

Getting the sequence right matters as much as getting the arithmetic right. A makegood agreed after the invoice has gone out is a credit note, a conversation with finance and a client who has already queried the bill; the same makegood agreed before it is a line item.

It is not the same job in every medium

• Television — positions in named breaks, the densest set of separation and clearance rules, and reconciliation against ratings as well as against airings where the campaign was sold on a guarantee.
• Radio — rotations rather than positions, and a large share of inventory that is not a spot at all: live reads, endorsements, sponsorship of a bulletin. Volume is the difficulty — fifteen to twenty breaks an hour, per station, across a group.
• DOOH — no breaks and no log in the broadcast sense: a share of a loop across a package of screens, settled on proof of play reported by each player, where a screen dark for four hours is a shortfall only the play log shows.

A system built for one of the three and pointed at another fits badly in exactly these places, which is why a media group that owns channels, stations and screens usually ends up running three systems and reconciling between them by hand.

The vendors

Traffic and billing has established specialists, and they are good at it: WideOrbit and Imagine Communications (Landmark) for television, Marketron for radio, Operative where linear and digital inventory are sold together, and ADvendio where the media company runs on Salesforce and wants ad operations inside it, and AdMaster for a single station that wants it by subscription. Most are strongest in North America, and all of them are station-side: the buyer's plan is built somewhere else and arrives as an order.

OpenMediaLogic covers traffic and billing across all three media and holds the buyer's side in the same record, which removes the re-keying that produces most reconciliation differences in the first place. It arrives as a subscription with onboarding in 48 hours rather than as an implementation project. A broadcaster that already runs one of the systems above and wants a marketplace in front of it connects through the API instead of replacing anything — the alternatives page sets out the comparison vendor by vendor.

Evidence

In Kazakhstan, the platform's first market, up to 95% of the country's TV inventory is sold through it. The National TV and Radio Company of Uzbekistan opened transparent sales of state airtime on it and added 47% occupancy and 120+ new advertisers in a year — case study. Beeline Kazakhstan brought 11 TV channels, radio and DOOH into one workflow and cut media costs 32% in nine months — case study.

Deployment outside the current markets

Billing in local currency, data stored in the country, the market's audience currency and clearance workflow connected through the API, interface in 16 languages. The UK, Australia and Philippines pages describe what that would involve in each market's own trading terms.

Request a demo on your own schedule. Related: TV ad sales software, radio, DOOH, media sales automation, and the glossary for avails, pacing and the rest of the vocabulary.