4 ms·

Are there salespeople in this area anymore, or is it all automatic? Shouldn't the salespeople be working harder to sell unsold inventory?

• madeofpalk 10y ago
  Of course there are salespeople. When the country's leading air freshener brand wants to buy out all premium ad placements for a section of a website as a part of an integrated tv/online/outdoors campaign, they're going to want a salesperson to work things out with.
  • a3n 10y ago
    And yet an excuse is auctioning unsold inventory to unsavory networks. If I was buying a box of cereal, "we couldn't source enough reputable corn, so we topped it with melamine" would be the death of that cereal, for me. (And yes, this is buyers at the cereal company instead of ad sellers, but it's the same: the hypothetical cereal company was not able to "sell" enough of its money to corn suppliers.)
    • madeofpalk 10y ago
      But yet as a developer "i don't write good enough code, so we have a massive test harness to catch any bugs I might introduce". Of course the goal is to operate at 100% efficiency, but in reality that's not going to happen all the time. Backfill channels like this are a way to make at least a little bit of money when sales a slow for a bit for whatever reason. In terms of the problems the online media industry faces with advertising, the efficiency of in-house sales teams is not a huge priority atm.
      • a3n 10y ago
        And so I block. :)