About Crackle
Crackle is a rapidly-growing, ad-supported video entertainment network that’s free to consumers. It offers full-length movies, TV shows, as well as a growing lineup of original programming, available through a host of different platforms including connected TV, set-top boxes, mobile devices, game consoles, and on the web. Crackle Connex is their portfolio offering of AVOD and FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channels and platforms, providing advertisers with a wide variety of ways to reach and engage consumers.
Challenge
Managing all of the advertising workflows at a video entertainment network is an enormously complex task. Tracking and overseeing different ad sales revenue across various properties and platforms is difficult and requires pulling data and information from a host of different systems. In Crackle’s case, the team manages revenue across what they call their “three pillars of revenue”: Direct, Programmatic, and Reseller revenue. Their challenge is getting all of those different levels of inventory and demand into their various systems, and understanding what inventory they have left to sell. They also have difficulty always knowing what their CPMs are, where they should go based on their audience segment targeting, or whether they have restrictions against them – all of the different things that come into play with an Insertion Order (IO) or a programmatic plan of attack.
The company was struggling using its existing advertising systems, having difficulty assessing levels of inventory along with advertising demand, understanding what its CPMs were, and having challenges making informed, data-based decisions on how to maximize various ad campaigns across multiple channels.
Operative solutions have been key to us understanding our business better. From a Revenue Operations perspective, it’s all about efficiency and speed in decision making, which in turn has a direct impact on revenue, and in-part due to the visibility and insights gained from using Operative, we’ve seen a dramatic revenue increase in our Crackle Connex business.”
Seth Wernick, SVP of Revenue Operations at Crackle
Solution
The team at Crackle implemented Operative’s OMS platform Operative.One as well as STAQ, the industry-leading media analytics platform, to better manage their advertising workflows and gain better visibility into all of their advertising data. Operative.One enabled them to centralize their operations, allowing their entire team to view IOs throughout the entire advertising sales and execution process, as well as delegate responsibility to appropriate team members. STAQ provided visibility into all of their data through clear, customizable dashboards, greatly improving their demand pipeline visibility. In addition, they were also able to clearly assess performance of their reseller partners, which in turn helped uncover new revenue and business opportunities.
Powered by Operative solutions, Crackle was able to implement:
Results
Operative’s revenue automation solution has helped Crackle significantly increase top-line revenue for Crackle Connex, its portfolio of TVOD, AVOD, and FAST channels and platforms. The company has been able to streamline its advertising operations through centralized data and full-team visibility into its advertising workflows as well as its sales pipeline. The team has been able to better manage CPMs with more stability and consistency. Finally, they’ve been able to better assess and measure the performance of their reseller partners, enabling them to invest more heavily in their high-value partners.
