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2 separate functions. Why?

I must admit - at first I didn't get it. We were hired to build a multimillion dollar planning system and in the process learned everything there is to know about media planning. (We delivered it successfully, btw.) Then I learned that the most well-researched and rationalized plan in the world might get totally mucked-up during the buying process. (Yes - I said 'mucked up'. So what? 'muck off'.)

So it turns out that 'buyers' are the ones who...(shockingly)... do the buying. It is sort of like making a detailed list for the supermarket and, having written down 'Dole Pineapple Ringlets' because you just love them so much, and having handed the list to the 'buyer'.. he returns instead with unripe Chiquita bananas. They are both, in fact, tropical fruit (so 'the buyer' tells you) so the spirit of the original plan has not been thwarted.

Think my metaphor is over-the-top? Well - IT AIN'T! But why? Because there isn't any way to translate the actual plan into 'a buy'. The process of buying is about hidden knowledge and horse-trading and favors to old friends. Planning is done without a real understanding of availability, so by the time the plan hits the buying process - - no one knows how it is exactly going to be fulfilled.

What's funny is - this same thing is happening even with digital OOH. The fragmentation of the digital market has made the administrative overhead of buying even more painful - and therefore that much more disconnected from real top-down strategy (and planning).

'What is the problem you are solving?' the VCs like to ask us entrepreneurs. 'What is the pain you aim to alleviate?'

There are many hurdles to cross in bringing real automation and efficiency (and true enabling of top down strategy) to the media industry. Obliterating the differences between planning and buying is one of them. That's what we do. This is the essence of rbidr's enterprise positioning.

Spasmatron, as a proof of concept, is working pretty much exactly as conceived. That said - it was designed to serve a limited purpose: to provide an end-to-end, working example of the underlying rbidr concept. That much has been accomplished. Never again need we discuss rbidr in the abstract.

'The Abstract' however is where we return to talk about the future of our business. This post is all about Absolute Time and Relative Time and building yet another bridge from the fundamentals that underlie rbidr to practical business applications and 'go to market' strategies. rbidr - to date, has almost entirely been about absolute time, e.g. mapping an asset to a timeline, and then selling off chunks of time as inventory. From there, you can do all sorts of neat things with the inventory to manage optimal yield and achieve price optimization. (e.g. sell it all off at the highest possible price-point)

It is long past time for us to bring 'relative time' into the discussion. Relative time is when a clock starts ticking on request, or upon the occurrence of a particular event. The best way to understand absolute time vs. relative time is to think of television. A sporting event that is scheduled to broadcast at 1pm EST (10am PST) is ABSOLUTELY being broadcasted at a precise moment. With certain programming, it is 100% known in advance how much inventory there is (e.g. ad breaks), and when they will play. With a sporting event, you don't know exactly when the game stoppages will be, or even if a game will end at a specific time. The sporting event begins to bring in the notion of relative time - because the amount of inventory sold, and when it will play, is relative to other factors and events, such as time-outs, injuries, overtime, etc.

Using our own vernacular, what we are really saying is that the asset itself can be dynamic. Spasmatron has a fixed asset - a digital display placed somewhere, with an absolute live broadcast stream. With relative time, the assets are not fixed, physical things, but rather things of value that can pop into existence upon the occurrence of certain events, and then disappear again upon the occurrence of a different event. But, while the asset does exist, it behaves absolutely to the recipient, and can be sold accordingly.

This concept of relative time is crucial in many industries, most obviously radio and television. It sounds like a high concept, but in actuality it is a very practical matter where all sorts of inefficiencies and manual activities presently occur. rbidr provides a both a conceptual and visual framework for systematizing approaches to relative time inventory, creating massive value in a space where chaos presently reigns supreme.