The CFO Perspective – Creating a More Efficient Media Business
The media industry is transforming rapidly. People are shifting to streaming, which is dramatically altering media companies – how they capture audiences, sell and deliver advertising, and grow their business.
At the same time, M&A activity is intensifying and will continue to be top of mind this year, with media companies acquiring a broad range of businesses from digital data companies to gaming brands to smaller competitors.
This evolving environment brings both opportunity and complexity. For CFOs, the mandate is clear: prepare for change and lead the business toward operational efficiency while maintaining agility and growth.
One way for companies to achieve this is to streamline their businesses, creating efficiency across many different facets including processes, data, technology and strategy.
Becoming More Nimble
From a CFO perspective, not all revenue is good revenue. If a part of the business is resource intensive and low on margins, it may be time for a change. For media companies, costs can build up in a few ways:
- Outdated processes: Entrenched teams in traditional TV, local broadcast and ad delivery may have manual sales and operations processes that hold them back from adapting to new digital models.
- Disparate technology: Legacy systems are essential to run their day-to-day businesses, but they also need a layer that unifies everything into a single workflow.
- Unusable data: Advertising, audience and product data is not useful if it’s outdated, incomplete or stuck in fragmented systems.
Media companies must focus on creating efficiency across all three of these pillars to make sure they can act quickly in a fast-moving market and capture opportunities.
Getting Value from Data and Technology
Updated, complete and accessible data helps businesses gain a window into their business. It could take weeks or months to make the right decision if you don’t have access to business insights, and even then, it’s hard to be certain if the data is not reliable. This can stop media companies from capturing timely opportunities.
Good data reveals key revenue drivers and hidden growth opportunities. IT infrastructure goes hand-in-hand with data. Technology needs to be united in order for data and business processes to flow smoothly. Realistically, media companies are not going to rip out all of their current infrastructure. Rather, they need to strategically connect their technologies to streamline workflow and enable integration for ad delivery, reporting and measurement.
For CFOs, the ROI on unified data and integrated systems is clear – reducing operational overhead, shortening sales cycles, and enabling more profitable decisions at scale.
Operative AOS was built to help media companies bring the data from their disparate platforms into a single cloud instance, unifying insights and unlocking opportunities for strategic growth. AOS enables media companies to have a single product catalog, unified pricing and multichannel business analytics that can drive incremental business lift. With good data and technology at the center of the business, media companies can create efficiency with confidence. Sales teams can build better proposals faster, operations teams can traffic and optimize campaigns with less work and more accuracy, and analysts can find opportunities in the business and move quickly to take advantage.
For CFOs, the ROI on unified data and integrated systems is clear—reducing operational overhead, shortening sales cycles, and enabling more profitable decisions at scale.
Be Ready for Change
By creating an efficient business, media companies can make smarter strategic decisions and be ready to lean into change rather than be crushed by it. Whether those strategic decisions include M&A, investment in a new media channel, or deciding to “build or buy” technology, being prepared for change is a critical element for success.
Prepare for M&A
Studies show that between 70% and 90% of M&A deals fail to deliver their intended value, often due to poor integration, cultural misalignment, or lack of operational readiness. When a media company makes an acquisition, the resulting business consolidation is going to work significantly better if they have a culture prepared for change and efficient systems that can quickly absorb the new business and unify processes.
Evaluate Long Term Cost/Benefits of Build or Buy
Media companies have core competencies. For some it is creating content, for others it is distributing content. When it comes time to expand their business or prepare for market changes, it can be tempting to try to build a custom solution that works just right for a media company’s unique needs. While custom-built solutions may offer short-term control, they rarely deliver long-term ROI—especially as market dynamics shift and maintenance costs grow. Off-the-shelf solutions with proven scalability and adaptability often offer faster time-to-value and lower total cost of ownership.
Media companies should only consider building their own solutions in rare, highly specific cases where no viable commercial option exists and the internal team has the proven capability to maintain and evolve the system over time.
Focus on Competitive Differentiators
Not every growth strategy fits every company. As you build your business, make sure you have the opportunity to accelerate growth where it will give you the greatest lift. This means understanding the potential revenue and costs but also the areas that marry well with your current business strengths. A broadcaster with local reach may prioritize empowering local sellers; a company with a rich content library might optimize monetization per stream. Know where your advantages lie and focus investment there.
Conclusion: Be Efficient, Be Agile and Prepare for Change
Efficiency is no longer optional. In today’s media environment, it’s the foundation for growth, innovation, and resilience.
CFOs who streamline operations and unify their data and technology landscape will be best equipped to:
- Improve margins
- Accelerate revenue capture
- Respond to market shifts
- Capitalize on M&A opportunities
Operative is built for the wide variety of media companies that exist today as well as the complexity and change that every media company experiences. With a partner like Operative, media companies gain not only tools, but a strategic advantage—unlocking the full potential of their people, platforms, and data.