PITTSBURGH—Gray Television has launched the first phase of Matrix Solutions’ cross-platform Admiral media sales gateway across all of its stations, Matrix said today.
The first step includes adoption of a modernized sales proposal system for linear advertising. The phase is a jumping-off point for the media industry to transition to converged advertising, the company said.
“We view this phase as a significant first step in transforming our business as we evolve as entities,” said Karen Youger, senior vice president of sales operations at Gray Television. “We are thrilled to be a vested partner working alongside Matrix as they develop this next-level technology that will enable us and our industry to adopt and accelerate converged advertising workflows with ease.”
The fully developed gateway provides the infrastructure and workflows to automate converged advertising sales from demand through order fulfillment for digital and OTT inventory, traditional spots and impression-based/dynamic ad insertion for live linear, the company said.
Proposal system advancements include aggregating multiple markets and different rate cards within the same proposal. Built on an open API infrastructure, Admiral is an open system that supports ingest and dissemination of all data, including any measurement, currency or rate and inventory optimization, it said.
Dynamic interoperability ensures orders are routed automatically to the appropriate execution system. Admiral also will shift orders to new execution if how and what a user sells changes, thereby reducing the impact of change, it said.
Gray Television is one of four investors in Admiral, which is being developed and released in phases. The other investors include CoxReps, Graham Media and Hearts Television.
The next stage will include a fully converged experience for traditional linear, digital and OTT workflows. Completion is targeted for July 2023, the company said.
