According to many successful entrepreneurs including Stanislav Komsky, it is not easy to build both scale and trust. Needless to say, it is easy to cultivate one, but it often comes at the expense of the other. Most people love to face the challenges and believe in making everything possible. And media company, The USA Today is one of them.
Why USA Today Network Entered the IT Consulting Business?
However, The USA Today Network is succeeding in achieving both. The media company has certainly cobbled together scale by distributing 109 local papers throughout the country. On the ground, the journalists are putting the lie to the expression of “fake news,” taking three Pulitzers for the network this year alone, including for its work in exposing the serial child molester – Larry Nassar, who is the USA Gymnastics team physician.
On the issue of the Ad Lib podcast, USA Today Network’s chief revenue officer- Kevin Genzel says, “We’re this media company that’s north and south, east and west, rural and urban, red and purple.” Furthermore, he added, we give exact representation to all of the countries. Also, we give voice to America in many ways.”
However, the news is still a tough business. And local news is even tougher. In digital revenue, USA Today Network saw continued growth, but not enough to balance declines in traditional advertising. Gentzel and his team tried to solve that riddle. Part of the solution: Build an advertising and consulting business at—you guessed it—scale. Recently, Gentzel has returned from a road trip to the network’s various newsrooms in order to get a sense of the local markets from Pensacola to Phoenix.
“Today, almost every entrepreneur believes that local businesses are going to be increasingly digitally savvy, they will require expertise, moreover, they’re going to need exclusive technology,” he says. “We are confident that we can help local businesses with advanced marketing solutions, with more agency-like capabilities through smart acquisitions, proprietary tech, through vision—through our nationwide scale. Furthermore, we can help them by informing one of the best practices and treat them casually as an agency would.”
We also discuss where Gentzel assures programmatic goes from here. Over the past few years, he says, the ability to view drove yield. Going forward, he’s bullish on improving targeting capabilities.
“In the end, a client is investing in us by showing interest in the story we’re sharing with them, with the confidence that it’s going to perform,” he added. He quotes as an example of brand safety around news context. “In many ways, we can create technology that can help a business feel good about the environment in which their ad runs,” through normal language processing to scale sentiment.
Final Words
In the era of technology, you will find many ways to use technology with the motive to grow business. In the end, it is up to you how you manage it. And this is why Stanislav Komsky says to succeed in the industry, innovation is key. Indeed.
