Sponsor (Oct-Dec 1960)

Any size agency can now use mechanization SIZE AND ABILITY to spend do not limit the firms that can now take advantage of mechanization. The above is an IBM 704 computer at the IBM Service Bureau in N. Y. Independent bureaus throughout the country rent machines and personnel by the hour for any types of computation munication between agencies and media could be advanced to the stage of sending tape and cards instead of invoices. "For example," he said, "the station representative would offer the the agency a contract calling for a cost-for-time bill monthly, and all information would be contained on a simple card or tape. The great saving to the buyer, in terms of never having to spend so much time wading through past-performance paperwork, will change the very nature of the job. "The great saving to the stations would be in the fact that they'd get paid on time. The agencies, after all, want to pay as soon as a station's bill comes in, but challenges and protests arise all the time because the make a decision can make it, not on a basis of experience or personal values, but on the basis of fact. "Automation will make the media buyer more important in the sense that he will be able to concentrate on what to buy rather than serving as a human adding machine and accountant." The major value to the media department of the computer is that it can assemble and store tremendous amounts of information. It does this, in Salkind's words, "in a fantastically short period of time. If the timebuyer has a schedule of hundreds of stations to compile," he continued, "all he need do is set for himself a method of buying, selecting the stations, and the machine will bat it out for him. "Also, in inter-media balancing and selection, the computer can actually set proportions in terms of goals, such as which will reach high , income people, which regional groups, and so forth." Mechanization should have its greatest effect on spot television and ra jdio, among all the media. The spot media have long suffered from lack (of business from buyers who avoid ,it, consciously or unconsciously, because of the blizzard of paperwork Jboth before and after the buy. ! This was hinted at Benton & Bowles, where the feeling would ap Ipear current that mechanization may ■ prove itself to the industry by com ing up with the long-sought answer to one of the big problems in agencymedia relations, and the one that most concerns spot salesmen, the billing bugaboo. As William Vickery, B&B vice president for finance, and controller, noted, "The agencies are in favor of anything that will clarify and speed up the cycle from the time an order is placed to the time a payment is made. It's to their advantage and to the advantage of the media. We believe that the computer may be the answer, on the simple theory that if you get something right the first time you don't have to go on handling and rehandling it. "sponsor's standard billing form, I might mention, goes a long way toward finding a suitable solution, but it cannot correct the original source of differences between agencies and the media. We think that the computers may soon prove that they can do just that." B&B's views on mechanization in its role as the eventual answer to the billing problem were summed up by the man closest to the agency's IBM set-up, John Boyd, Jr., manager of data processing: "The considerable variance between what the agency has set as its liability to the station and what the station bills, caused by differences in cut-off periods and a general overlapping of paperwork, could be eventually ended by mechanization. Com For the buyer: more professional status THE COMPUTERS can bring together all the information a media buyer might need on every aspect of a market or a station in minutes, says William Salkind, associate research director at K&E. "Books of stuff can be produced in a day. The beast is such," he states, "that if you join with it and learn to understand it, you can really ride high. But it can only ease the buyer s job — not take it over — and should actually give him a more professional status." SPONSOR • 3 OCTOBER 1960