Nailing down your budget for the year is no easy task. Once you’ve navigated the obstacles in your budgeting process and came to your best conclusion on the many unknowns of the year ahead, you are finally at a number that allows you to rest easy. However, the battle is only halfway over. Now you need to figure out your spread. You know where you need to be to come out on top for the year, but how about each quarter or each month? There are many smaller victories along the path to conquering the year.

Your budget is only as good as the data you use to create it with. Without reliable data, your budget is highly likely to miss the mark. With accurate historical data, you can build a budget that you and your sales team can stand behind with confidence for the year ahead.

The media industry is a data-driven industry. ShareBuilders uses that data to help clients navigate forecasting, budgeting, and inventory management with pinpoint accuracy. Working with data from every corner of the country provides fantastic insight to the industry. Patterns such as Olympic sellout trends, effect of sudden economic changes, pacing comparisons, and many others provide a multi-angle view of the industry at any given moment. This level of insight gives customers the ability to be proactive instead of reactive to any situation in the market.

By this point, you’ve likely read enough about COVID-19. With the pandemic continuing to impact all facets of daily life for close to two years now, it’s not a novel insight to suggest this has all been and continues to be “unprecedented.” That said, in our industry, it’s important to look at COVID-19 through the lens of future preparedness.

With the Tokyo Olympics just around the corner, we wanted to share data and observations from our client stations. The data presented represents an analysis of Summer Olympics and the revenue impact to NBC and non-NBC stations, based on ShareBuilders data from 2002-2020.

It is tragically funny how naïve we were a year ago. Kids will be out of school for a couple of weeks; I will wear this homemade mask; we will all work from home for a while; they surely won’t cancel my cruise/concert/the Olympics! And business? Yeah, this will be a hit to bars, restaurants, spring events, and entertainment. But these cancellations are short term, right? Yes, we were naïve.

Here at ShareBuilders, we pride ourselves on the depth of information our Holding Capacity models provide. Our system is complex and multifaceted, which can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with the tool. It’s easy to get bogged down in jargon, and sorting through the various indices can be rather daunting. Today we’re going back to basics- what is a Holding Capacity model, and how is it useful to you?

Your inventory is always evolving, and keeping up with it is a major part of your sales team’s job. Staying on top of the solds, avails, pricing, demand and changes of your inventory is likely taking your sales team more time than it needs to.

The right data can turn a standard proposal into something captivating and competitive. Instead of just talking about the benefits of a potential sale, you can show the proof in numbers. 

There’s just one problem - who has the time to gather, analyze and chart all that data?

As an already fast-paced world speeds up, technology gives your team the edge it needs to succeed.