DDS MediaOcean and WideOrbit are pleased to announce the first-ever cooperative integration between station traffic and media sales. The two companies have successfully completed an ambitious project to fully integrate their respective sales, order management and traffic applications—the MediaOcean media sales system and the WideOrbit traffic system.

“This was a huge undertaking for both companies,” says Harvey Kent, chief media strategist at DDS and DDS MediaOcean. “Dedicated integration teams worked together to conceptualize, design, program and test the systems. It is a pleasure to work with WideOrbit. Like DDS MediaOcean, this is an organization that aspires to and achieves professional excellence. We look forward to more of our joint customers taking advantage of this new integration between WideOrbit and MediaOcean.”

The success of this project represents the completion of the goal to provide seamless, bi-directional business processes for the spot television industry. The integration includes two-way, XML-based, electronic transactions for every business process with both systems in real-time. And, since MediaOcean communicates electronically with media buying systems using the DARE protocols, the MediaOcean-WideOrbit integration achieves complete, end-to-end synchronization between station traffic, media sales and media buying systems.

"DDS MediaOcean and WideOrbit have delivered a well integrated sales and traffic platform [that] will enable us to improve service levels provided to our advertising agency customers."

Katie Curtis, SVP of Ad Sales Technology, NBC Universal

The DDS MediaOcean and WideOrbit systems are deployed in this fully integrated mode at NBC Universal, which participated in user acceptance testing.

“We understand the substantial benefits that tightly integrated systems provide to our customers and we are happy to dedicate the resources to work with MediaOcean and NBC in this effort,” states Eric R. Mathewson, founder and CEO of WideOrbit. “MediaOcean, the leading media sales and agency system worldwide, is a very professional and technically advanced organization. Our combined strengths allowed timely, successful completion of this complex, customer-focused project.”

"DDS MediaOcean and WideOrbit have delivered a well integrated sales and traffic platform,” says Katie Curtis, NBCU SVP of Ad Sales Technology. “We have deployed this at two of our stations, and will aggressively roll it out to all our NBC O&Os by year-end. This integrated solution will enable us to improve service levels provided to our advertising agency customers."

Kent adds, “The result has been a flawless migration for NBC Universal.”

About DDS MediaOcean
DDS MediaOcean is the leading provider of systems, software and services to broadcasters and TV rep organizations. MediaOcean, the most comprehensive media sales system on the market, is easy-to-use, scalable and web-accessible. It streamlines workflow, improving management and reporting of national and local sales activity. For the first time, in one system, all proposals, orders, revisions, make good offers and confirmations are synchronized across buying, sales and traffic systems in real time. This means fewer discrepancies, improved communication, reduced overhead and increased productivity for both buyers and sellers.

DDS MediaOcean provides implementation, training, customization and support services, and is a division of Donovan Data Systems (DDS). The company has a head office in New York and other offices in Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles.

About WideOrbit
WideOrbit provides advertising infrastructure that empowers media companies anywhere in the world to improve yield management and maximize advertising revenue. WideOrbit delivers flexible software solutions that address the needs of a wide range of advertising mediums today and in the future. WideOrbit simplifies and automates the sales, traffic and billing of advertising with proven software solutions that deliver to customers unprecedented control and visibility into their advertising inventory.

WideOrbit provides software solutions to manage the advertising sales process for television stations, radio stations, cable networks, cable interconnects, mobile video, movie theaters and digital display networks. WideOrbit’s client list includes: NBC, Telemundo, Hearst-Argyle Television, Gannett, Meredith Corporation, Madison Square Garden, Transit TV, Scripps Television Group, and Qualcomm/MediaFlo. WideOrbit was founded in 1999 and has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and London, England.