Since spinning off from Emmis Communications in the spring of 2008, Emmis Interactive has grown from a software provider for radio stations to a multi-faceted company. It now powers radio station websites for other broadcasters, such as Greater Media and Corus Entertainment, licenses its software for a variety of companies and is closely involved with radio’s initiatives involving Apple and iTunes. Co-President Deb Esayian spoke to FMQB about some of the ways the Emmis Interactive is bringing the web and the airwaves closer together, as well as her recent experiences as a Co-Chair of the NAB/RAB Radio Show in Washington, D.C.

By Joey Odorisio

Deb Esayian

Emmis Interactive began as a division of Emmis Communications, leading the way for the company’s online revenue. It grew over the past decade and in April 2008, spun off into its own separate, wholly-owned subsidiary of Emmis Communications. The company now powers radio station websites for other broadcasters, such as Greater Media, and licenses its software for a variety of companies. Co-President Deb Esayian spoke toFMQB about some of the ways the Emmis Interactive is bringing the web and the airwaves closer together, as well as her recent experiences as a Co-Chair of the NAB/RAB Radio Show in Washington, D.C.

Emmis Interactive is involved with a lot of different worlds. Can you describe the essence of the division?
Primarily we’re a software company. Our content management system, BaseStation, is the primary product we sell, and that empowers interactive franchises of local media. We service radio stations, TV stations and magazines. Emmis Interactive was spun off from Emmis Communications about two-and-a-half years ago. We had actually been the digital platform for the 23 radio stations of Emmis Communications. We started getting calls from other broadcasters who wanted our software because we built it specifically for local broadcasting, but there wasn’t anything to buy. We would have been happy to license something if there was anything, there just wasn’t. So we built it out of need, not out of ego. Honestly, who would start a software company if they really knew what running a software company was like? We also built a business model around it where Emmis was monetizing those sites, and that was a magic formula that other people wanted to buy. We started getting other broadcasters calling us saying, “We’re not going to build this ourselves. We want to license what you’re doing – everything: the software, the consulting on how to monetize that software, and how to use it for programming.” That’s essentially what kicked off our venture with our parent company, which funded our spinout and got us to where we are today.

Emmis Interactive has also focused on bringing radio and the Web together in new and different ways. What are some innovations Emmis has made to combine the two?
Here’s a great example. For years, radio stations have been doing remote broadcasts. When you take the van out, you have a promo team and they’re staked out for a couple of hours at an advertisers’ location. People will come and stop in, either to see a sale or to look at cars or whatever. What if you put that whole experience online? What if using our software and our approach online, we teach you how to sell that to the advertiser in a way where they get the concept and see that it actually brings more interested people who are intentionally coming for that purpose, and allows them to spread the net far wider than an actual location promotion? We call those cyber-remotes. Instead of a remote broadcast for real, it’s actually done on the home page of the website. It’s only for a limited period of time, four to six hours, and a special offer is available during that period of time if you come online, sign the guest book and experience whatever it is they want you to experience. The only people who do that are people really interested in the topic, which means we’re bringing a really interesting consumer to the advertiser, which is our job, and it actually works better than what we’ve been doing for the last ten years.

Emmis Interactive is closely involved with iTunes Tagging. How has the response been, and is there data out there to show how many songs are tagged and then bought?
Yes there is, but iTunes Tagging is still too new to have that much data out there yet. We just launched our TagStation technology at the NAB/RAB Radio Show in Washington, DC. Advertisers will be weaved into song tags, and to the responses that people get. We already have the infrastructure laid in with our iTunes Music Stores, the proprietary software we built with Apple. So whenBroadcast Electronics wanted to do more in this area, Apple told them “you really ought to talk to Emmis Interactive, they’ve already built the infrastructure.” So we just laid more highway down to create TagStation.
TagStation has a huge future ahead of it, and we’re really excited about it. The response to it was phenomenal. It’s very affordable. It really brings radio stations into the forefront of this type of tagging technology, and sets them up nicely for the future. We found that most broadcast companies are very interested in acquiring this technology and starting to work with it. It allows them to clean up their tagging and to send out very accurate tagging which will certainly eventually be a path for advertisers.

You were a co-chair of the NAB/RAB Radio Show. What did you take away from this year’s show?
I took away a tremendous interest in the industry resurging. We were way oversold with both Marconi Award Dinner tickets as well as registration. We achieved our goal in terms of attendance. I saw that people are interested in doing something now and feeling a little bit more hopeful about the future. They’re interested in seeing each other, meeting with each other and sharing ideas. I felt like the broadcasters that were participating in the contents of the show were doing a great job of sharing their perspectives, their wins, their losses, their learnings and their hopes. There were definitely about 500 or 600 more people than in Philadelphia last year.
I really felt this tremendous resurgence and energy towards trying to do something differently. I certainly felt it, not only as the co-chair, but also as a premier advertiser at that show. As an advertiser, I was extremely pleased with the people met and talk with and just showed interest in where we we’re going and their future. I think that bodes well.

What were some of the other highlights this year?
I think one of the highlights was that we had a lot of Canadian broadcasters come down and talk to us which I think is really important. Radio is very healthy in Canada. They have very healthy broadcast companies with their brands. That was very popular and people enjoyed hearing from them. I think that there was a lot more meat in the actual presentations. The steering committee, over which I presided, was very adamant about their quality of the content being good. We want people to come back and know that that’s going to be the new standard for this nouveau way of doing things, with the NAB and the RAB together throwing one show. I believe you see a united industry and we’re always better off if we are united.

Isn’t Emmis Interactive very involved with Canadian broadcasters?
Yes, Corus Entertainment was our first customer. We just recently helped set up all 83 Astral Media sites in 100 days. So we power both Corus and Astral up in Canada. We also powered the iTunes storefront for Channel 2 of the CBC.

What else did Emmis have debuting at the Radio Show?
We had a brand-new product called Guidable, which is the way that radio stations can really go after business profiles and directory listings. It’s great software, especially for entry level stations that are just learning how to monetize their websites. It gives them an affordable way to get onto our software platform and do some quick monetization and then grow into more sophisticated opportunities. We’re real excited about it and it was very well received. You can find out all about what Guidable will do on our website, emmisinteractive.com.

How does Emmis Interactive work with some of the on-air aspects of stations?
Some of our clients want to tap into what Emmis Digital client stations have learned, as they have been on our system for several years. Emmis Digital refers to the Emmis Communications stations owned by our parent company.  In particular, some of our Emmis DJ’s have created routines and approaches to integrating media to maximize engagement and connection with their audiences. An example of someone who does that really well is Electra, our midday host at WKQX (Q101)/Chicago. When our clients want to do workshops for their DJ’s, they may ask us to bring someone like Electra to speak about her show prep and how she integrates the online medium into everything she does. Most of our clients found time with Electra quite helpful and begin to use some of her strategies in their day-to-day work. They can also follow what she is doing online at Q101.com and follow her tweets so see how she operates. Examples are always the best way to teach new ideas.

What else is ahead for Emmis Interactive on the radio front?
With PPM coming into the picture, the ability to really understand your database and your listener has become critical. You need to have software that truly gives you intelligence about each individual listener, because only five percent of your listeners actually matter in a PPM world. They’re the only ones that are ever going to make a difference in the meter that’s going to get you the ratings you’re looking for. So understanding of your individual listeners is critical and becoming super-important, and those who are using our technology are getting that and starting to learn how to really use that technology in a hyper targeted way to market their stations and experiences.
            For us, it’s important for the industry to understand that marketing is really important and that marketing doesn’t mean putting up a billboard. It means getting to know your listeners, tracking their behavior, hyper-marketing to them and super-servicing them. Very similar to how airlines and other real database clubs work. Getting good at that and making that a specialty within the station. These are areas I’m starting to see very sophisticated broadcasters poke at, and it’s exciting because this is where the real meat and potatoes are in terms of radio’s superiority as a medium in general. Nobody gets the kind of intimate, granular details than radio stations do because of the fabulous relationship they have with their listeners – very trusting and therefore very open. It’s very different than what social networks can get and we find that extremely compelling.

[eQB Content by Joey Odorisio]