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Media Logistics Software Creates Operational Advantage and Improves Productivity
of Digital Media Teams
CHICAGO, IL – March 11, 2013 – Centro (centro.net), a provider of modern media services and software, today announced Centro Planner, cloud-based software that automates, documents and consolidates every step of the digital media buying process. Centro Planner simplifies repetitive, manual tasks, enabling agencies to get more work done faster and invest time on higher value, client-facing output, like campaign strategy and analytics. Centro Planner will be unveiled at the 4As Transformation conference in New Orleans, March 10-13.
Broken Operations
Digital is straining agencies because planners are trapped in outdated practices and tools, like email, spreadsheets and PDFs. Agencies want better solutions, but the archaic and cumbersome technology currently in the market ranges anywhere from ineffective to reviled. Centro helps agencies overcome these challenges with intuitive, purpose-built software and managed services that provide operational efficiency. Centro’s CEO, Shawn Riegsecker, will address these topics on a panel session during the 4As conference.
“Centro gets what planners and buyers go through. From our preview of Centro Planner, we think it offers one of the most intuitive and time-saving solutions in digital media planning today,” said Kazi Ahmed, VP Group Digital Media Director at mediahub/Mullen. “Our main focus is to be smarter, faster and more responsive for our clients. By leveraging powerful tools, our team can maximize the time we spend on larger, innovative campaign ideas, instead of organizing and documenting the tiny details of media logistics.”
“Broken operations are severely impacting the health—and happiness—of the advertising industry. Digital teams are drowning in labor-intensive and complex processes. Centro aims to change this by automating media operations,” said Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro. “For online advertising to truly scale and give advertisers the campaigns that they need and deserve, we must fix these inefficiencies.”
Centro ‘Gets’ Media Logistics
Centro Planner is software created for planners by planners—leveraging the company’s eleven years of knowledge in executing media logistics for more than 1,000 agencies. Centro’s highly effective media logistics specialists developed digital know-how by executing more than 20,000 national and local campaigns across all display platforms and ad media types. The only provider in the market to offer both managed services and software, Centro streamlines the full digital media campaign lifecycle.
Centro Planner quickly implements with agencies with a few users, and scales rapidly to accommodate large organizations with multiple teams. Features and benefits allow users to:
About Centro
Centro (centro.net) partners with advertising agencies to improve their campaign performance and digital media teams’ productivity in order to better manage costs and maximize profitability. Centro is the only provider that offers both managed services and cloud software options to simplify and streamline the full campaign life cycle to meet the unique requirements of every agency. Since 2001, Centro’s media logistics specialists have successfully planned and executed more than 22,000 local and national campaigns across all digital display platforms and ad media types. Headquartered in Chicago with 32 offices nationwide, Centro’s success and commitment to culture has led to many accolades, including #1 on Crain’s Best Places to Work in Chicago in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Contact:
Anthony Loredo
[email protected]
646-462-4888
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While the excitement of the holiday season is over, there’s a ton to look forward to in the New Year for technology enthusiasts. For those deeply curious about what’s to come in 2013, there’s no better place to get fully immersed in what’s to come other than the International Consumer Electronics Show.
The 4-day conference commenced with pre-show events on January 7th. The formal program runs from the 8th through the 11th at the Las Vegas Convention Center and The Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Besides grand displays of the newest technological devices, unmatched networking opportunities and a meeting of the industry’s greatest tech minds, key show offerings will include the masses of seminars led by industry experts and executives.
The keynote speech Tuesday kicked off show events. One notable change from past years will be the traditional commencement speech by a Microsoft executive. For the past 9 years, the keynote speaker at CES has been either the Founder or CEO of Microsoft. This is the first year the PC giant won’t be doing the honors. In their place will be Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs addressing topics including the future of mobile technologies. Jacobs previewed his address during a Charlie Rose interview last week.
Other noted keynote speakers will include Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, Samsung President of Device Solutions Dr. Stephen Woo, and Chairman of U.S. solutions at American Express Josh Silverman.
Take a look through scheduled events at the CES official website’s session page.
We have a team from Centro attending the conference. If you have recommendations on valuable panelists or speakers you’re planning to check out this week, give us a head’s up in the comments section below.
Read part one of this article: CES 2013: Gadgets galore to debut at the Convention
Yes, “mobile” is no longer a thing of the future. It is here and it is prominent, but still struggles to get its share of the advertising dollars.
According to an AdAge White Paper, consumers’ media consumption time on mobile is up to 10 percent, while marketers’ share of advertising budgets is only 1 percent – this is a large gap.
On top of that, mobile usage is only picking up steam. Some studies predict that the usage of mobile devices for search will surpass desktop in 2014, and others believe local search volume will surpass desktops in 2015.
Whichever proves to be more accurate, it doesn’t matter as the fact remains the same: Your customers will be on their mobile device more than their desktops…yet we spend only 1 percent of our advertising budgets in the space.
Just as paid search blazed a trail on “audience buying” and “RTB,” it’s leading the way on mobile advertising, as well. According to a Marin Software study, smart mobile devices will account for 25 percent of all paid search ad clicks in Google’s network by end of year and were about 12 percent of total search budgets in 2012, according to a Yahoo!/Bing Study.
The share of the budget that mobile search gets is a smaller percentage than the click share because mobile CPCs are less expensive. As competition picks up, CPCs will pick up, ultimately lifting the share of budgets at a faster rate. However, that gap is much smaller than the industry as a whole (see above: 10 to 1).
Here at Centro, we see a little over 15 percent of our advertising budgets in paid search going toward mobile. While search marketing continued to be the biggest contributor to online advertising in 2012 at 46 percent, according to eMarketer, it is often overlooked as media of the future. Well, look no further.
As the interactive community becomes more favorable to performance and results-based media, paid search will continue to provide high ROI and large budgets. According to Adobe, tablets and mobile phones have the highest ROI and tablets have the highest conversion rates when compared to desktops.
With growth in impression inventory estimates up to 120 percent year-over-year, look for advertisers to become more aware of the Mobile Paid Search opportunity and begin asking the question “how can I spend more in mobile?”