In Praise of Business Optimization - Bill Harvey

Marion Harper was the genius who invented agency holding companies. He was also a seer who knew where the future would eventually be going. What none of us could ever have suspected is how long real innovations take to happen in the advertising industry.

Harper invented a thing called the Applied Science Group in which I was one of the two managers. The group was the first in the industry to my knowledge to assemble operations researchers with media researchers. Together we built not one but a battery of optimizers. We were however scooped by both BBDO and Y&R; BBDO announced its Linear Programming Optimizer and Y&R countered with Bill Moran's High Assay Optimizer months earlier.

I love optimizers. I know that Erwin likened them to misers, with that twinkle in his eye, and he knew their power. Seller optimizers are called Yield Management Systems and the two can handshake and work out double-optimized ("win/win") deals. Whole businesses can be optimized. The late Gerald Despain of Next Century Media could optimize anything, having done it at GE. John Malone thinks optimizistically. My book MIND MAGIC is all about optimizing the actions of the mind. Everything can be optimized — and should be.

Just as it took 34 years for addressable TV commercials to become a reality at scale in the advertising industry as it exists in this real world, optimizers are taking even longer to reach full exploitation. The one beautiful exception being Digital, where RealTimeBuying (RTB) is a reality now seeping into TV. The possibilities for what is left to do in optimization are endless, and the linked piece reprinted from the Myers Report (1999) boldly (red-faced now) predicted that by the 2005/06 Upfront, the optimizer war might already be happening. It could have happened by then. When will it happen?

Best to all, Bill

PS: I was on Bob Lederer's Internet TV channel, Research Business Daily Report (RBDR) last week talking about media ROI.

Bill Harvey is a well-known media researcher and inventor who co-founded TRA, Inc. and is its Strategic Advisor. His nonprofit Human Effectiveness Institute runs his weekly blog on consciousness optimization. Bill can be contacted at bill@billharveyconsulting.com

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