CM talks with Denise Shrivell – MediaScope

We’ve been long time fans of Denise Shrivell, whose background is in advertising sales before she launched her own business MediaScope which, amongst other things, helps publishers with their monetisation strategy. Here’s her view of the online media world.

What’s your background in media?

I have been in the advertising, publishing and media industry both here and overseas for over 25 years – straight from school. I started as a media planner/buyer in full service agencies – and then jumped the fence to advertising sales.

I have enjoyed various roles at BRW/Fairfax and News. In 2000 I was on maternity leave from Fairfax and looking for something to do for a few hours each day. I moonlighted doing some ad sales for a small start-up site – Essential Baby – and stayed until the sale to Fairfax Digital 7 years later – it felt very full-circle indeed.

Since leaving Essential Baby/Fairfax over 3 years ago I have been consulting businesses in the development of their advertising sales & revenue strategy. Everything from media kits to rate structure/forecasting to defining their market position.

Many media owners recognise that advertising is not their core expertise though it can be a key revenue source. They use my services to develop some or all of this publisher-to-advertiser segment of their business.

I also do some contract advertising sales training, various special projects and produce articles such as Digital People on media trade site Digital Ministry.

In the last 18 months I have launched an advertising directory – MediaScope. We are now the most comprehensive resource of niche, alternative and emerging advertising options in the Australian market with over 2,500 listings – and we’re growing fast. We are also realising several tailored extensions to our core directory service.

What’s the elevator pitch behind MediaScope?

MediaScope was launched to solve a deepening problem in the media trading landscape. We’re an advertising directory which connects buyers and sellers focusing on the often hard to find, constantly evolving and highly effective ‘long tail’ or ‘beyond mainstream’ end of the market. Very simply our aim is to ‘aggregate increasing advertising choice’.

What’s the number one problem facing the buy side in media in Australia?

I think there are several problems facing the buy side. From my perspective it is the problem of missing opportunities to reach their – or their clients – market. The media landscape is fragmenting and changing so quickly – advertisers, marketers and sme’s are too time and resource poor to ensure they are seeing – and assessing – all the options which are increasingly available to reach their audiences.

There is no doubt ad buyers have almost too much choice for their advertising spend and if anything this over-supply has led some buyers – particularly large media agencies- to reduce the number of media suppliers they trade with and increase their focus to the ‘usual suspects’ or low hanging fruit options. If I was a client I would be concerned about this.

What’s the number one problem facing the sell side in media in Australia?

Again – many problems. From my MediaScope perspective it is in two parts – firstly building their story for advertising buyers and secondly finding an effective story teller.

I see many media owners with a great deal of potential to either generate or increase some level of revenue through advertising. Their challenge is to develop strategies and tactics to communicate (more) effectively to potential advertising buyers.

The second part to this is having a highly effective story teller – it’s all very well to have a great story but you need someone to tell it.

Not only is it a very tight market to find good advertising sales people, sometimes even getting through the door to see advertising buyers can be the biggest problem facing the sell side – particularly if you are media in the niche, alternative and emerging end of the market ie not the ‘usual suspects’ or low hanging fruit.

How do you help each side out?

Good question! I can help both buyers and sellers in many ways both through the MediaScope advertising directory and also through a growing range of tailored one-on-one services.

Firstly MediaScope provides a comprehensive, free and easy to use central resource to connect advertising buyers and sellers – with a specific focus on beyond mainstream niche, alternative and emerging media options.

We also offer a growing range of one-on-one services such as advertising sales & revenue consultancy – and a media planning service where we help buyers, marketers and agencies identify and qualify new media options based on their specific briefs.

Just the other day an agency rang wanting to reach teachers – I was able to very quickly point them directly to candidate media options which was not on their radar.