Sponsored Content by Matrix

Many participants in the broadcast advertising market have recognized that there are several opportunities to make improvements to the process of buying and selling ad placements. Some of these deal with growing the pie to more effectively compete against the behemoths of digital advertising. But even without radical change, there are ways to improve the current methods used for executing transactions.  First and foremost is the need to increase the level of automation.

Both media companies and advertisers benefit by reducing the complexity of the ad buying process, and by making it more consistent across organizations. Advertisers benefit from simplified processes, reducing their internal costs, and relieving their staff from unnecessarily complex practices. Media companies benefit by improving their organizational responsiveness, thereby removing barriers that make their offerings harder to buy than those of their arch rivals, the digital media giants.

Streamlining “Make-Goods”

One aspect of broadcast advertising that is ripe for improvement is the “make-good” process, whereby a media company agrees to repeat an ad placement when the initial placement did not attain the expected audience level.  In many markets, the process to resolve this can involve a back and forth negotiation between the advertiser and the media company. Any actions resulting from these agreements need to be tracked and reconciled. 

Simplifying and automating the make-good process could greatly benefit media companies and their advertisers.  By providing a mechanism to either preauthorize additional placements or to make the approval process less complex, many hours of labor can be saved. In addition, it makes sense to develop a method for routinely cancelling outdated transactions, in effect setting an expiration date for a make-good. 

Opportunities for Innovation

Many other areas can benefit from a new, algorithm-based approach to advertising sales. With a more consistent set of transaction data across suppliers, forecasts will be easier to make. Advertisers will be able to gather and compare audience data more easily. Media companies will be able to more effectively manage their sales pipeline, and focus effort on developing new opportunities instead of simply servicing existing accounts. Lower transaction costs will benefit both buyers and sellers, and simplify the work of large advertisers running ongoing campaigns over multiple markets.

Automation can also improve the security of purchases and audience reporting. By using the latest techniques from the data communications industry, each transaction can be secured and properly recorded for tracking and follow-up, thereby eliminating the need for paper records and fax logs. Broadcasters can also deliver viewership reports securely, which are inherently free from the manipulation of pay-for-clicks and other dubious practices in digital advertising.  These attributes can increase the relative value and improve the competitive position of television advertising gauged against  digital ads.

MASC, the Media Ad Sales Council, comprised of thought leaders from across the media industry and representing different verticals and viewpoints, was recently formed to advance the media ad sales ecosystem through automation, convergence, and inclusion. The group is focused on identifying outcomes and workflows that will advance how television will be bought and sold within the next three years. This effort will help increase the pace of adoption of new technologies and improve cooperation between key stakeholders in this evolving marketplace.

Media-Focused CRM Adds Value

All kinds of media organizations are coming to recognize the benefits of augmenting their relationships with clients by using media-focused CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, such as the Monarch Platform from Matrix. Because of the multiple steps involved in media sales, generic CRM systems are ill-suited to the challenge of tracking customer inquiries, orders and reporting. With the changes that are currently underway in this market, including increased automation and standardization, having CRM systems that are not only positioned for the future of media sales, but that are advanced in optimizing inventory, aid in uncovering new revenue, and proficient in automating processeswill become crucial to the success of a wide range of organizations.

Explore how you can automate your ad sales and customer relationship management processes. Read more.

About Matrix

Matrix Solutions is a forward-thinking technology company that empowers the media ad sales world with intelligence, technology, and expertise. It provides the technology back bone for the end-to-end workflow for sales organizations, transacting in the media marketplace. Its flagship solution, Monarch, is the only global ad sales platform built specifically for media, delivering the CRM and business intelligence necessary to optimize inventory, while the Matrix Sales Gateway, serving as a sell-side dedicated platform allows for the ingestion and dissemination of data from all providers in the ecosystem that participate in the negotiation and execution process. Matrix manages more than $13 billion annually in media ad revenue, has over 10K users, maintains over 95% renewal rate, and has founded the annual Media Ad Sales Summit and Media Ad Sales Council (MASC) – both of which bring together industry leaders to advance the future of media ad sales. For more information, please visit matrixformedia.com.

Sponsored Content by Matrix

Buying television ad space can be a complicated, frustrating process for buyers. Local advertisers, such as auto dealerships or furniture stores, may want to have the same ad distributed in multiple markets, on multiple channels in one market, or a different ad on multiple channels in multiple markets  to promote an event such as a holiday sale. The space booking process typically involves contacting the appropriate account executive within each media organization, requesting a quotation, placing an order, reviewing the resulting as-run data and paying the invoice(s). These steps are repeated thousands of times each day in hundreds of media markets across the country.

Unfortunately in today’s environment, the particular details for each step of the ad buying process vary from one media organization to another. For example, one station may have a web portal for submitting an RFQ, whereas another  might ask ad buyers to send them an email or a request by fax. While these differences may appear to station owners as a way to “lock-in” ad buyers to their specific media properties, in reality the added friction of working with multiple systems increases the intangible costs to buyers, making TV media buys more difficult than they need to be. For national advertisers, who may want to place ads across a swath of markets simultaneously, these headaches are compounded a hundredfold or more.

Moving Towards a Single Supply Point

The fundamental idea of an SSP (Single Supply Point) for television advertising is to allow aggregation of ad purchases across multiple media delivery systems and regions for both local and national ad buyers. With such as system, ad buyers would have a single, uniform way to research ad avails, request quotations, place orders, and receive as-run results across multiple media properties using a consistent, uniform process.

One major benefit provided by an SSP is to improve the competitive position of traditional media properties when compared to the digital media giants such as Google and Facebook. Those platforms already offer almost instantaneous ad placements, and can support advertisers who want to react quickly  to changing markets or important news events. By deploying an SSP to provide real-time data, broadcasters can more effectively compete with the digital giants and automate many tasks that are currently done by hand. By doing this, media companies can free up their sales team to focus on cultivating new business.. Automation can also be harnessed to help traditional media properties migrate towards dynamic pricing to optimize their rates to an ever-changing level of demand.

Delivering Common Metrics

Another area where traditional media companies lag behind their digital competitors is in providing audience data to advertisers. The data sets that are provided are often difficult to utilize, due to mismatches in the ways that the audience is sorted into categories, the ways in which viewers are counted, and how the data points are aggregated across first- and third-party sources. Remedying this will require media companies to adopt a consistent taxonomy/vocabulary and to agree on common metadata templates and data models. The ultimate goal is, of course, producing a standardized API that can be used across the industry, which will enable advertisers to roll up summary results from many sources while still supporting the ability to drill down to get important local audience details in customized segments.

By working together to offer an SSP with improved audience metrics to ad buyers, media companies can streamline their sales processes, improve their responsiveness to advertisers, and enhance their competitive position against the digital advertising giants.

Explore how you can automate your ad sales and customer relationship management processes. Read more.

About Matrix

Matrix Solutions is a forward-thinking technology company that empowers the media ad sales world with intelligence, technology, and expertise. It provides the technology back bone for the end-to-end workflow for sales organizations, transacting in the media marketplace. Its flagship solution, Monarch, is the only global ad sales platform built specifically for media, delivering the CRM and business intelligence necessary to optimize inventory, while the Matrix Sales Gateway, serving as a sell-side dedicated platform allows for the ingestion and dissemination of data from all providers in the ecosystem that participate in the negotiation and execution process. Matrix manages more than $13 billion annually in media ad revenue, has over 10K users, maintains over 95% renewal rate, and has founded the annual Media Ad Sales Summit and Media Ad Sales Council (MASC) – both of which bring together industry leaders to advance the future of media ad sales. For more information, please visit matrixformedia.com.

Tatari, a data and analytics platform for buying and measuring TV advertising, said it has launched an automated process for reviewing and approving insertion orders for linear and streaming inventory.

NBCUniversal is one of the broadcasters using the system.

With more digital TV inventory being created, and campaigns being more targeted, the industry is looking for technology to replace labor intensive parts of ad buying and selling. Automated systems promise quicker transactions and lower costs.

"Previously, processing direct orders was very manual and inefficient, as orders were passed back and forth as attachments from the initial proposal phase through final sign-off," said Brad Geving, VP of media buying at Tatari. "Our streamlined order process completely eliminates the manual back and forth among multiple parties for both streaming and linear. This saves publishers and networks significant time and headaches and, when widely adopted, can lead to a more efficient media market overall."

Also Read: Tatari, Clearco Help New Brands Access up to $10 Million for TV Ads

The upgrades to the Tatari platform lets media buyers generate an order request using a standardized template that is hosted online. Tatari’s media booking tool enables the buyer to email the order to the broadcaster or streaming platform and the account rep can sign the order electronically, automatically triggering an approval confirmation.

Tatari said the new system cuts processing time by 90%.

"At NBCUniversal, we pride ourselves on making it as simple and easy to buy premium video content as it is to watch it," said Scott Berger, VP of direct to scale at NBCUniversal. "Tatari’s technology has had an extremely positive impact on how we process direct insertion orders, streamlining the process and enabling us to prove out the efficacy of the NBCU audience for our DTC partners."

The year that was…

2020 was a year like no other. The pandemic drove an unprecedented acceleration of digital enablement, as companies and organizations of all types adopted virtual substitutions to in-person experiences, such as remote work, online education, and telehealth. This drove a massive consumption of bandwidth, upstream and downstream, and led cable operators to add 1.32 million subscribers in 3Q 2020 alone.

Broadband service providers have added capacity at a furious rate in 2020 to meet the exploding demand. Due to the short-term circumstances, some broadband providers, and more specifically cable operators, had to temporarily put aside their longer-term plans, such as virtualization and the re-architecture of the access network, and use more traditional tools to add capacity. 

The massive need for capacity in the upstream has prompted operators to reconsider tools they had in their arsenal, such as mid-split, which allocates 85 MHz of spectrum to upstream, and high-split, which allocates up to 204 MHz but may require the spectrum to be extended to 1.2 GHz to preserve downstream capacity. Another technology that received renewed attention in 2020 is orthogonal frequency division multiple access, which is part of the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications and improves spectral efficiencies, resulting in added capacity.

The year ahead

High levels of bandwidth consumptions will continue

Although the level of growth will taper off in 2021, high levels of bandwidth consumption will continue in 2021 as some of the digitally enabled business models will persist and evolve to become an essential part of the strategic framework. For example, many companies will retain some version of flexible work arrangements well beyond the pandemic, and some predict that about 20% of remote work will never return to in-person; another example is healthcare where the limits on in-person treatment drove almost a five-fold increase in telehealth-based treatment. Healthcare regulation is expected to continue to be relaxed in 2021, and telehealth utilization is expected to persist, and indeed grow, as the industry evolves business models toward more comprehensive virtual care modalities that include solutions such as remote patient monitoring and age in place. In addition to driving bandwidth consumption, these solutions will over time accelerate the comprehensive re-planning of the communications and computing infrastructures.

Technologies that gain traction in 2021

Mid-split and high-split: The trend that started in 2020 will continue, as the need for capacity in the upstream will exceed the capacity of most existing cable access infrastructures.

Low latency DOCSIS: More and more applications, such as gaming, are demanding latency as low as 5–10ms. New applications are emerging where continuous remote health monitoring of patients in their homes complemented by real-time remote data analytics that inform medical treatment may also require low latency data in the near future. Furthermore, augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) applications are increasingly finding important applications in medicine. For example, at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills, California, a study is focused on using VR for a nondrug approach to treating lower back pain.

The Distributed Access Architecture (DAA): DAA took a relative backseat in 2020 as operators used largely proven methodologies to meet capacity demands. However, continuing to add capacity with node splits and more hardware in the headends is not sustainable over the long term. Therefore, DAA remains the most viable architecture over the long term, with fiber moving ever closer to the customer. The debate between Remote-PHY and Remote MACPHY seems to have subsided somewhat, and the recently introduced Flexible MAC architecture, which gives operators flexibility in the location of the MAC, is gaining industry traction. 

Virtualization and cloud native implementations: As operators raced to meet the capacity surge, a clear shortcoming they faced is their inability to elastically scale capacity with demand. If the level of demand does not sustain at the level for which they planned, some of the capacity added will not be utilized, resulting in stranded capital. One of the main advantages of virtualization is the velocity and flexibility that operators gain in introducing new services and features, in scaling capacity with demand, and in gaining more visibility into their networks, leading to fault mitigation and better reliability. The move toward a virtualized headend, already under way, will continue and even gain momentum as the operators exit fire-fighting mode. 

DOCSIS 4.0: As demand for upstream bandwidth continues to grow, operators will need capacity beyond mid-split and even high-split. The DOCSIS 4.0 specifications, released in early 2020, enable operators to increase upstream capacity to 6 Gb/s. Although field implementations are still years out, operators will begin to decide their DOCSIS 4.0 strategy. Operators have two approaches to consider: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS, which involves increasing the highest plant frequency from 1.2 GHz to 1.8 GHz and later to 3.0 GHz; and Full Duplex DOCSIS, which works within 1.2 GHz using overlapping frequencies for upstream and downstream but may impose restrictions on the number of amplifiers and other legacy equipment between the node and the subscriber.

Passive Optical Networks (PON): Another approach that operators are considering for achieving 10G capacity is FTTx implementations via PON solutions, which allows them to build on their HFC investments to deliver even higher speeds. 

WiFi 6 and 6E: The need for more capacity and performance will continue to drive deployments of WiFi 6, and as WiFi 6E is introduced in 2021, which delivers even more capacity, operators will start supporting the new technology.

Automation: The recent pandemic, social distancing requirements, the increasing complexity of the networks, for example DAA deployments and 5G backhaul densification, will drive operators to implement more automation in the networks.

New business models will be explored

As bandwidth consumption shifts to homes and other locations, and as bandwidth is increasingly used to replace in-person activities, new frameworks around who pays for broadband will start to be explored, as discussed in a prior blog.

Beyond broadband networks

Although the focus has been on bandwidth capacity, and justifiably so, major currents are underway in the broader telecom industry. As digital enablement accelerates, companies in many verticals and consumers in their homes will need increasingly complex applications. Delivering connectivity, while essential, will no longer be sufficient. Offering complex solutions that include connectivity, computation, automation, and generic and vertical-specific application modules will emerge; service providers have the opportunity to play a major role in this emerging area. However, this will require investments, new partnerships, and innovative business models.

Guest blog author Liliane Offredo-Zreik is a principal analyst at ACG Research, where she is responsible for cable access infrastructure market research and consulting practice. Offered-Zreik is also president and founder of boutique advisory firm The Sannine Group.

FreeWheel has delivered a system that will automate and optimize the way NBCUniversal schedules commercials on its linear network, paving the way for more flexible, cross-platform campaigns, digital ad insertions and, eventually, addressable advertising on traditional TV channels.

Both FreeWheel and NBCU are part of Comcast. FreeWheel will also be able to deliver customized systems for automatically optimizing linear schedules to other clients as well.

FreeWheel’s new AutoScheduler technology analyzes ad breaks on linear networks and business parameters to fill out a complete schedule, dynamically placing spots across all NBCU networks so that they deliver each client’s target demographic.

“Our goal is to help marketers reach any audience at scale, on any screen,” said Ryan McConville, executive VP, ad platforms and operations, NBCUniversal. “With the same discipline and response time as a digital ad server, the AutoScheduler technology will help clients reach their target demos across linear with accuracy and precision. The technology was built to align optimization capabilities of a linear traffic log with a modern-day ad server.”

FreeWheel’s technology already schedules ads in NBCU’s digital assets and enables clients to get a single invoice when it buys ads on multiple NBCU platforms.

“In a lot of ways, linear had been a sort of final frontier for us,” said Benjamin Miller, VP of product management at FreeWheel. The old-school way of handing linear ad schedule limited the ability of the network to create cross channel campaigns that use data to target specific consumer groups.

“This really shows the industry that we have an ability to support a publishers full suite of premium video inventory and help them offer to their customers the ability to reach their audience no matter what they’re watching or where they’re watching.”

Miller said that the system will help NBCU fulfill upfront orders with schedules that efficiently reach advertisers target markets and allow the flexibility to change schedules nimbly should an advertiser’s plans change, if programs are rearranged or if audience viewing shifts.

Automating linear scheduling also opens the door to more data-driven campaigns aimed at targeted audiences and, eventually, to addressable advertising. 

FreeWheel’s ad decision making process supports Dynamic Ad Insertion at the impression level for digital and on-demand investor. “Linear is still not quite there yet, but we have the foundation in place that will allow for us with NBC to continue to evolve that footprint and support more dynamic options,” Miller said.

FreeWheel handles ad tech for a number of programmers, and FreeWheel is laying the foundation for them to be ready for addressable advertising as well with systems tailored to their assets.

“We’re rolling out similar versions as we speak,” he said.

NBCUniversal’s Advertising and Partnership division said it expanded its relationship with Salesforce, giving its sales team additional online resources at a time when they are handling more data and different types of inventory while many work from home.

As part of its The Future of Work initiative, NBCU has also launched a “center of excellence” that help the company build a more diverse, inclusive and equitable workforce and help them do their jobs better.

“We all share the responsibility for transforming our industries and our society—and that starts inside our own companies. With Salesforce, we’re building a unified information source to re-imagine collaboration across our entire platform so that NBCUniversal can continue delivering the highest level of transparency, insights, and results for our customers,” said Linda Yaccarino, chairman, Global Advertising and Partnerships, at NBCUniversal.

Salesforce on Tuesday announced that it agreed to pay $27.7 billion for Slack, doubling down on work-from-home technology.

Tools from Salesforce, including Quip, Inbox and Chatter, will help NBCU stay organized and more productive. To manage data inside of Salesforce, NBCU is activating Datorama software. 

To help engage clients and support its Insights and Measurement team, NBCU will use Salesforce’s artificial intelligence tool called Einstein. Einstein will help staffers deliver better recommendations and Tableau will help showcase those insights in presentations.

Saleforce’s Pardot will provide measurement and metrics around marketing engagement, NBCU said.

NBCU staffers also have access to training technology to help them use the Salesforce tools.

“Real-time access to more information will provide NBCUniversal’s partners an open, accountable structure, helping to tailor solutions and campaigns, understand audiences, and measure impact,” NBCU said.

In a blog post about the Center of Excellence, Christina Glorioso, senior VP, Sales Effectiveness and the head of the Center, and Brad Epperson, senior VP, Sales Operations and Business Automation, said the best way to build the future of work is to work with NBCU’s marketing partners.

“Our commitment to our people is also an investment in our customers. When we empower our teams with the information and insights they need to propose creative solutions we become more valuable partners,” they said in the post.

The center's goal of developing the most mobile sales team in the industry has been based on four key pillars: diversity and inclusion, having collaboration tools, career pathing and development and sales excellence.

“Already, these efforts have shown results and sparked cultural change, with more than 80% of our sales teams utilizing our new shared resources for essential information and training,” the blog post said.

Upcoming developments include NBCU's annual innovation day and opening up the Bold & NBCUniversal group to partners outside the company, so some programs can be shared.

There is little that the COVID-19 pandemic has left unaffected, and television advertising is no exception. Trends toward automation and addressability, which were already being felt under the surface, are only accelerating, and there is a renewed focus on updating how TV advertising is bought and sold to limit the impact of the ongoing pandemic on broadcaster revenues.

The onset of the coronavirus at the beginning of the year saw two key changes to viewing and content production. TV consumption increased, combined with a greater demand for streaming services (and therefore OTT ad targeting). A host of data points showed TV consumption continuing to evolve towards OTT/on-demand channels, reflected by broadcast VOD viewing in the United Kingdom being up 45% year-on-year.

But as the world went into lockdown (where it is once again headed), and watched more TV, the production teams, actors and sports teams that generate the content were also placed on pause. This has had secondary effects on the release dates on many anticipated TV shows and movies with additional restrictions on how they will be produced. Many sports have been unable to move forward with their normal cadence (the Olympics in particular), which has further impacted inventory availability. 

Adapting to an Altered Reality

The new reality forced broadcasters to adapt production, programming and advertising schedules fast. Live sporting events and new programming were put on hold in favor of older, higher-performing inventory. This meant that the advertisers who were relying on and investing in the canceled events now had to redirect their advertising budgets elsewhere, while also changing their creative messaging to be more culturally and socially appropriate for the times. This opportunity cost sits with the broadcaster. 

Moreover, these delays continued down the production supply chain (as well as pushing back this year's upfronts), meaning many of next year’s anticipated programs will not be ready, putting further future advertising at risk.

Both sides acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had: the traditionally TV-heavy advertisers are asking for more flexibility on performance and spend while utilizing new tools and tactics to reach their audiences, while broadcasters need to replace the postponed ad campaigns on the fly and at lower price points. These reactions to the current climate have created a need to be flexible and act fast which has boosted the scattered buys.

The scattered buys that were considered lower quality by many are now an attractive market for advertisers who wouldn’t generally spend on TV. Both linear and addressable remnant inventory has historically had problems delivering reach at scale. However, without upfront reservations constraining supply, a
lack of inventory is no longer an issue. Scattered buys present an opportunity for broadcasters to quickly fill airtime while maintaining the incoming revenue, albeit at lower rates. 

Because the time-to-campaign-launch is critical, broadcasters also need to find a way to speed up the process of negotiating, contracting, planning and scheduling that usually take a significant number of weeks. This is where innovations in platform automation and coordination become essential. 

Ad sales, ad operations, programmers and media planners on the broadcaster side now have to synchronize activities to ensure fast-to-air campaign launches, while also managing costs and ensuring the inventory isn’t undersold. One solution to this rather complex problem is to use a unified supply and demand management platform. By monitoring the inventory that is available for selling versus inventory that is already booked, broadcasters can analyze and control the prices based on the delivery and demand for a specific program in real time, driving greater yield. 

Automation of the campaign booking process on the demand side could also solve allocation issues with remnant and guaranteed delivery by providing an overview of the best available rates for the interested programming and audience. Sitting on top of existing systems, easing the ad sales and ad ops workload, automation technology can create a more holistic view of the overall available inventory and open up a new demand channel for the first-time TV buyers that are looking to increase their reach in digital and are used to a simplified buying process. 

An Automated Future

Post-pandemic, the TV advertising ecosystem will come back with new content. It will also return with new automated systems, such as predictive inventory pricing that enables weighted campaign allocation across channels, content packages analysis and ad placement optimization that optimize both yield and ad spend, as well as competitive and search intelligence integrations to help drive monetization efficiencies. While it does not look like the upfront and the scatter buying models are going to disappear, how they are used by both major advertisers as well as brands that are new to TV will need to be reassessed. 

Maria Mryasova is director of advanced TV solutions at IPONWEB, leading a team focused on enterprise advertising technology solutions for cross-channel audience buying and selling in connected TV, linear and digital.

Operations executives who continually fret about the difficulty of hiring top technical talent -- either at programming or system operating companies -- will take small solace from a new analysis by CBRE Group Inc., although the real estate firm's "Scoring Tech Talent Report" quantifies their concerns and offers some explanations why competing companies "are willing to pay a premium for top" technology staff.

"Strong demand for skills such as software development, hardware engineering and information security, coupled with a tight labor supply" are affecting companies' decisions about where to locate, the CBRE report explains in its checklist of 50 markets, focusing on the ten most expensive metro areas. Predictably, the San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Washington, D.C., markers have average tech salaries 17% to 33% above the national average, But even in No. 7 Denver and No. 9 Orange County, Calif., salaries are at least 8% above the national average, according to CBRE. Cities such as Atlanta and Newark, N.J., climbed up in this year's Fifth Annual CBRE study.

For cable operators, the tech staffing issue confronts the reality of geo-location, since their facilities are a factor of their franchise areas, although central technology headquarters can be located elsewhere. Vendors don't have such geographic constraints, although many U.S. suppliers have gravitated to the tech capitals on CRBE's roster.

CBRE also developed a "Tech Talent Analyzer" to calculate the cost of doing business in each of the 50 markets, including nearby Canadian cities. Using a formula that encompasses the cost of talent and real estate for a 500-person tech group using 74,000 square feet of office space, CBRE gauged total expenses ranging from $57 million annually in the San Francisco Bay area to $24 million in Vancouver, British Columbia.

CBRE pointed out that true high-tech companies compete with the tech needs of other industries that employ technology staffers, such as media and telecom providers.

“Only 37% of all tech-talent workers are employed in the high-tech industry, meaning tech companies must compete with other industries that employ the remaining 63% of tech workers," Colin Yasukochi, CBRE's director of research and analysis in the San Francisco Bay Area, said.

That data also enabled CBRE to identify "Brain Gain or Drain" communities -- that is, areas that attract employees (San Francisco; Dallas-Fort Worth; Seattle; Atlanta; Charlotte; Houston) versus markets such as Boston, Los Angeles and Washington , D.C., from which tech graduates leave town.

CBRE will run a "Scoring Tech Talent" webinar on Aug. 28 to explain its Tech Talent Scorecard and the real estate implications of the shifting tech labor force.

How AI and Robotics Will Create Jobs, Not Destroy Them
Shortly before CBRE's tech talent and real estate report surfaced, another analysis by International Data Corp. (IDC), emerged, evaluating the growing use of artificial intelligence in business management and its impact on jobs.  

The IDC study, sponsored by Salesforce, the software automation firm, largely focused on robotic process automation (RPA) -- including applications in customers relationship management (CRM) -- in the financial and insurance sectors. But an analysis of IDC's data concluded that RPA can also be applied to industries with large customer support and request processing requirements, such as telecommunications.

IDC concluded that global AI activities will produce $1.1 trillion in GDP and create 800,000 new jobs by 2021. The white paper did not single out telecommunications applications, but given the scale of the industry, it will account for a significant share of the financial action. IDC expects that AI will lead to $726 billion in increased revenue and $265 billion in decreased expenses.

IDC predicted that 2018 will be a "banner year" for AI adoption.

As for the expectation for job growth, IDC acknowledged that it is "well aware [of] significant debate about the long-term impact of AI on jobs." It said its forecast "embodies an assumption that AI will lead to net-positive financial benefits, which will drive job growth."

"Some roles may be eliminated, and others will be created or enhanced, not unlike the change in jobs in IT departments during the advent of the cloud," according to the IDC analysis, which used the assumption that "40% of the net-new revenue will support increases in labor and the rest will go for capital and other operating expenses that may replace jobs lost to automation."

Don't Fear the "Jobapocalypse”
Adding to the confusing outlook about the future of work, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation issued an analysis on Monday (August 14) proclaiming that "Technology Will Not Eliminate Many Jobs."

ITIF President/Founder Robert D. Atkinson explained that his think tank conducted its own manual analysis of 840 federally defined occupations from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compared 2014 employment to the agency's jobs projection for 2024. By combining the BLS employment forecasts with ITIF’s “risk of automation” variable, Atkinson predicted that "employment in high-risk occupations will increase 2% percent by 2024 while employment in low-risk occupations will increase 10%" by then while the overall labor force grows by 5%.

Atkinson reassuringly said that, "We should all take a deep breath...every time you read another piece about the coming 'jobapocalypse.'"

Among the 840 BLS categories that ITIF evaluated, here are some affecting to the telecomm and media industry job outlook for change of employment in the decade between 2014 and 2024. It includes only a handful face small declines, while several categories, such as video editors, information system managers and market research are expected to show sizeable growth.