Centro’s Riegsecker on Local’s ‘Mid-Tail’ Opportunity

The Long Tail in advertising may be SMB-centric. The Short Tail may be ad agency centered media buying, which only go to the Top 100 sites on the Web. If that’s the case, the “Mid-Tail” comes from local publishers, suggests Centro Media CEO Shawn Riegsecker. But these publishers, which rely on high value journalist-based content and integrated advertising, have lately been “losing their shirts.” They can’t scale on the Web.

For Riegsecker, whose company operates an 80 newspaper affiliate reseller program, the answer lies in automation that places media across the board — a reliance on automation he’s been touting for years but that we’re increasingly hearing for local advertisers in search (The Search Agency) and display advertisers (Balihoo).

Centro has been growing quickly, and now sports a 300 person team. Half are based in Chicago and the other half are in 28 regional offices around the U.S. Lately, the company has been especially focused on rolling out a range of automation solutions for 575 mid-tier, independent agencies that represent 2,600 advertisers.

Two weeks ago, the company rolled out Centro Planner, a planning and buying module formerly known as Transis. Additional solutions will include a campaign planning operations tool and next year, a finance app that will feature invoice and billing reconciliation.

“They all link together and automate an ad agency’s entire lifestyle,” adds Riegsecker. “They support very healthy ad agencies for a very healthy ecosystem.” By reducing the emphasis on remnant/inventory that only account for 20 percent of overall agency business, Centro helps to release resources for agencies to do data analysis, hire statisticians, and move into social, native and content marketing, he says.