Video: Horizon's Charlie Rutman on Media Sellers' New Responsibilities

RUTMAN: I think the pendulum has swung too far; particularly in this digital world I think the separation of media and messaging may have gone a little bit too far. In my opinion it's not about data. It's really about turning this wealth of data into useful actionable information.

RUTMAN: We're still charged with media outputs. That's just the nature of the business.  However, more and more every single day we're being charged with business outcomes -- there's a lot of ways to measure business outcomes.  Could be sales, could be new customers, could be customer retention, web traffic, so on. We are a business partner to our clients.  Our clients spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and we have to make sure that that money produces business results.  Getting more impressions is not a big deal anymore.  Watch Charlie's full interview here.

RUTMAN: So as we interact with all the media companies these days I think the onus is on us to make sure that they understand our clients' priorities. They understand our clients' needs.  What they are offering is shaped in a way that helps us produce the designated business outcomes that we need to have.  Listen, it's not easy.  It's not easy.  We're still very much in a transactional world.

View my full interview with Charlie Rutman here and watch all my Legends & Leaders interviews with senior industry executives atwww.legendsleaders.org.

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