Work with the ASM Application
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how the ASM application interacts and integrates with publisher processes and systems.
- List the roles that use ASM.
- Navigate the ASM application.
- Explain how to implement a media advertising campaign in ASM.
ASM and Publisher Integration
Meet the ASM application, powered by Media Cloud. It addresses all the common workflows relevant to the advertising industry. The application simplifies complexity, automates workflows, provides a single view of truth on one platform, and converges pre-sales and post-sales for all-around revenue management.
The component diagram shows ASM integration.
- Marketing Lead Generation: Before media planning can begin, publishers start their own lead-generation process to acquire audiences. To do this, they can use Marketing and Sales Clouds, and they can continue to grow their audience through Media Cloud applications, such as Subscriber Lifecycle Management.
- Integrations: The ASM application integrates with customer data and data management platforms, planning and inventory management systems, billing and invoicing, and third-party measurement data systems. These integrations can be point-to-point using Omnistudio Integration Procedures or through an integration hub, like MuleSoft.
- ASM Application: The ASM application is used after lead generation and integrates with publisher tools and systems to extend its own functionality and coverage.
With ASM, media and entertainment companies can quickly monetize streaming content across digital, linear, print, and out-of-home platforms. This includes automating omnichannel ad sales, configuration, pricing, and integration with third-party order management and fulfillment systems to optimize revenue and cash flow from ad inventory. ASM reduces order leakage, controls discounting, and speeds up invoicing and collection for media companies.
The Groups Who Use ASM
The ASM application is used by several different groups at the publisher. Let's take a look at these groups and the features and tools that help them do their jobs.
Working with ASM Accounts
Now that you’ve seen how Media Cloud and the ASM application are built on a solid foundation, let’s learn about the application itself, starting with accounts.
The Account Overview gives users a holistic overview of the account: Who are the key contacts? What kind of campaigns ran in the past? What is the revenue potential? Which agencies are involved? When you have this information, you can better plan future deal modeling.
ASM gives you different account record types to differentiate accounts, such as for advertisers, agencies, and brands. Plus, visualize the relationships among the key players for a specific account.
The Media-Planning Process
Advertising sales processes at publishers today are often siloed, with each stage in the media-planning process completely disconnected. The media-planning features of ASM solve this problem by providing a step-by-step path that links the entire process, as shown in the flow diagram.
With ASM, you can develop better media plans and ensure that each plan is configured correctly. Now, let’s learn what happens in each part of the process.
Create a Media Opportunity
First, you create the media opportunity, which is a prerequisite for the media-planning process. Quickly create opportunities from the account page.
Create a Media Plan
Next, convert the opportunity into a quote representing the new media plan. Here’s how to do it.
- From the opportunity, create a media plan.
- Specify ad placement selections for each line item of the quote, for example, the media type, products, pricing model, quantity, and ad space.
- Supply the remaining criteria, such as geographical location, time of day, and operating system.
- Check the availability of configurations instantly before submitting the application.
- Configure additional approvals any time, thus eliminating requirements for manual approval.
Generate an Insertion Order
- Create an insertion order document that the advertiser or agency can review and sign using Industries Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) and DocuSign. The documents contain line items and prices from the media plan and the legal terms and conditions associated with the selected products.
- Generate the documents using templates.
- Send the contract to the customer for signature.
- Once the order is signed, submit it to Industries Order Management to route the media plan's line items to the ad servers.
Publishers can configure the approval process as needed.
Create and Submit the Order
The next step in media planning is to submit the order. The order passes from Industries CPQ to Industries Order Management, which provisions the order and order line items to the ad servers, which are external to ASM.
Process the Order and Add Creatives
The order is sent using the Order Management orchestration plan, and order line items are sent to the ad server, along with all targeting criteria and details about the ad placement. Then you add creatives to ad servers using Ad Operations.
When order processing is finished, the order line items are marked ready. This may differ from one ad server to another. This process:
- Allows the publisher to monitor performance using the ASM dashboard.
- Enables them to change the order directly within ASM. This pushes associated campaign adjustments to the respective ad servers downstream.
Integration with ASM
That's not all! With ASM, publisher networks can integrate with digital ad servers, such as Google Ad Manager, Operative.One, Sizmek, Facebook, Xandr, and FreeWheel. The application also integrates with WideOrbit, Operative IBMS, and Mediaocean for linear advertising systems. This way, agencies can input large-scale RFPs and media plans upfront.
You can also integrate Datorama's analytics tool with ASM to view campaign data directly from ad servers. This gives you a seamless pre-sales, sales, and post-sales process. In fact, you can streamline all advertising-related activities under a single platform with ASM integrations.
These are just a few of the features that make up the ASM application, which continues to evolve with each new product release. Watch this space!
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