Dive Brief:
- CNBC launched an internal agency, Catalyst, to unify its international sales team and get TV and digital ad sales under one roof, The Drum reported.
- The Catalyst division will be headquartered in London and Singapore and will include several teams that cover everything from audience insight to content creation and experiences.
- "The heart of catalyst is trying to make sure that we can give our clients a true two-way dialogue with an audience that delivers the return on investment they're looking for all the time," Max Raven, CNBC’s senior vice-president of international ad sales, told The Drum.
Dive Insight:
Raven explained, "We often talk about interruptive one-way advertising, which is certainly very powerful still in many ways especially on live channels, but we're moving that towards a way to have a two-way dialogue with clients."
Unsurprisingly, data is the centerpiece of what Catalyst will offer advertisers, and CNBC has been actively recruiting talent from competitors such as CNN and the Daily Mail.
"Launching catalyst is really about aggressively reasserting what CNBC is in the market place, that's what we need to do," Raven said.
The move by CNBC looks like another example of TV becoming a walled garden where each company takes full control of its broadcast, cable and digital assets, forcing marketers to work with each media entity for widespread campaigns.