Q&A with Chief Technology Officer Bryan Mongeau: Why Broadsign decided to make a major platform change

February 20, 2023Kristen Theodore

In case you missed all the excitement, we recently announced the evolution of the Broadsign Platform, a change designed to completely revolutionize the way media owners operate in the out-of-home space. It’s the start of our next generation OOH platform, and we’re pretty excited about it. 

Containing all the features you know and love—not to mention a few tweaks and enhancements to better serve our users—the reimagined Broadsign Platform provides you with the smartest and most comprehensive tools available today. 

READ: Modernizing the platform that powers OOH: Introducing the evolution of Broadsign 

After all, the out-of-home industry has significantly evolved, particularly in the past few years. We needed to mature right alongside it, upping our tech in ways that go beyond what traditional CMS functions can offer. To make sense of it all, we asked our Chief Technology Officer, Bryan Mongeau, for his insights and to chat about what went into these changes. Give it a read. 

Why did Broadsign revamp its existing platform?

In an industry that’s increasingly focused on the value of programmatic transacting, Bryan shares the strategy and thinking behind this change and what it means for our users. 

Here, he discusses how it benefits media owners keen on modernizing their out-of-home businesses. Instead of overseeing campaign management across several products, this shift in thinking means that our customers can holistically manage all campaign goals from one unified platform. He dives deeper in this clip: 

What improvements does the platform bring to an average Broadsign customer’s day-to-day life? 

Check out the video to see how Bryan goes over what impacts this change will ultimately have on the average Broadsign customer’s day-to-day life — from providing them with a more seamless, single sign-on experience to consolidating workflows to simplify daily operations. He delves into what it means for your programmatic strategy too. Finally, he touches on the aesthetics of it all.

What’s coming next in the not-too-distant future?

Easy: Change is on the horizon. In this clip, Bryan hints at what’s left to come for the Broadsign Platform in 2023. 

Looking for campaign management solutions? Book a live demo to see how we can help you get started.


Video Transcripts 

Why did Broadsign revamp its existing platform, and why does this change matter for media owners?

Modern media owners these days need much, much more than just a CMS to run their business effectively. They need a single campaign management tool that can holistically manage all types of buys, from direct-sold impressions to programmatic PMPs and Open Exchange deals to multi-ssp header bidders without leaving behind the industry standard OOH buy types like frequency, plays, share of voice and takeovers. What we’re seeing today is that this increased complexity cannot be effectively managed manually and requires more advanced yield optimization algorithms that can strike the right balance between maximum profit and fulfilling the guarantees buyers expect.

What ultimately led Broadsign to this decision?

The journey that brings us to today’s Broadsign platform started with our CMS, of course, but also, builds on the tremendous adoption we’ve been seeing for our campaign management tool, Broadsign Direct as well as our SSP, Broadsign Reach. Our acquisition of Ayuda allows us to extend this holistic campaign management to include static formats and all the required operations around that medium, like copy management and actual posting. Our acquisition of Campsite (now called Broadsign Ads) is allowing us to unlock more programmatic capabilities not only for media buyers but for media owners as well.

We’ve been working hard to integrate these products and capabilities into a single unified platform as we believe that media owners will benefit from using a single tool to access all aspects of inventory management and campaign delivery across all formats (static and digital) and all types of buys.

What improvements does the platform bring to an average Broadsign customer’s day-to-day life? 

Great question. Firstly, it’s an improved user experience with a modern UI and seamless single-sign, which will remove some of the friction in your workflows. Secondly, it will save time by introducing a single unified notion of inventory, audience and user management. Lastly, it will unlock more tools to fine-tune your programmatic strategy with both finer-grained, frame-based inventory units as well as coarser-grained screen groups.

What’s coming next in the not-too-distant future?

Well, 2023 will be a very transformative year as the results of our unification initiatives will start to make their way into the platform. First up, we have our Adserver Campaigns coming into the platform early in the new year. Shortly after that, we’ll be adding static campaign management and operations in order to cover all the OOH formats. Looking towards the back half of the year, we’ll be introducing guaranteed campaigns and Direct’s optimization engine into the platform as well as expanding on our web-based content management workflows that are currently only available in our desktop application, Broadsign Control.