Case

An advanced content portal developed for Clear Channel

Clear Channel Finland Oy is a Finnish outdoor advertising company and part of the global Clear Channel Outdoor group. Clear Channel is a pioneer in digital outdoor advertising, providing advertisers with a modern and comprehensive advertising network. Customers submit their advertising materials to Clear Channel through the AdHub portal. The portal also allows for the processing of the material into the desired format for different surfaces.

A new tool for evolving needs

Clear Channel offers its clients a nationwide advertising network and versatile and eye-catching advertising platforms that enable them to reach large audiences quickly and effectively. On the other hand, smaller audiences can be targeted with highly targeted campaigns.

Customers submit advertising materials to Clear Channel via the AdHub portal. Clear Channel used to have a content portal, but it no longer met their changing needs. For example, the old portal did not have an automated review of material and could not be updated. Clear Channel Finland's Digital CMS & Project Manager Darius Skaudis was tasked with requesting quotes for the development of a new content portal. Knowit was shortlisted through recommendations, as one of Skaudis' colleagues had previously worked with Knowit.

"We chose Knowit for two reasons. Firstly, the price was competitive. Secondly, they have been developing similar content portals for media houses. To my knowledge, there are only three such advanced content portals in Finland, of which Knowit now has expertise in two. Quite a few media companies handle the uploading of material to ftp servers or forms. A content portal is an advanced way of doing this", says Darius Skaudis.

A host of improvements to the new portal

The portal was built on a serverless model on top of AWS technologies using Amplify solution provided by AWS. AWS Amplify includes tools for full-stack development from the service runtime platform to databases and end-user management.

At the same time, all code related to the platform is automatically versioned, making it easy to manage any rollback situations, while enabling testing of new features in separate environments. NodeJS with a React-based user interface was chosen as the implementation language for the actual application.

A long list of improvements was made to the new AdHub portal compared to the old application. The most important is the automatic processing of data. Clear Channel has nearly 3,500 digital surfaces to display, and the portal can automatically process materials to fit different formats. Another very important improvement for Clear Channel is the automatic reminders sent to customers for missing material.

"Automatic reminders save time for both us and the customer. Customer relationships are also improved when reminders are sent in a timely manner, rather than Clear Channel staff having to send them manually," says Skaudis.

The data portal also does a lot of pre-screening. It checks whether the material is technically sound, whether it is the right size for the campaign and whether the format and framerate, for example, are correct. If there are any errors or omissions, the portal tells the customer immediately.

Interest also from other business units

Many media houses recognise the situation that when material arrives, they start to work out which campaign it relates to. AdHub automatically links the material to the campaign by means of a transmission code.The customer who has purchased the campaign can then see the campaign and what still needs to be delivered on the portal.

"Some of our customers were initially a bit sceptical about whether delivery codes could work and there were even fears that it would add more work. But this turned out to be the case: now we are very happy with them and our customers prefer to submit their material via AdHub using the delivery codes," says Skaudis joyfully.

Both Skaudis and Jessi Salenius, who worked as a project manager on the Knowit side, describe the project as having gone well. The first word that comes to mind is that it was fun. "Even though the issues to be discussed were difficult, the meetings were humorous and good-humoured. The people behind the project were a lot of fun. It made it easier to work together when it wasn't too formal", says Skaudis.

"Things were taken forward in a good spirit and with humour. Even though the topics were sometimes demanding, the meetings were always a pleasure to look forward to", says Salenius.

Interest in AdHub, built by Knowit, has also grown in Clear Channel's other European business units.

Jussi Siuro

Senior Sales Executive, Knowit Solutions, Finland

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