Matrix Blog

MASC Member Profile: Al Lustgarten, Hearst Television

Written by Team Matrix | January 6, 2023

We connected with Matrix MASC Member Al Lustgarten from Heart Television to get his position on the value of MASC and its impact on the industry.  Listen to his responses below.

 

 

What is the value of the Media Ad Sales Council, otherwise known as MASC? 

You know, MASC is an opportunity to join like-minded colleagues and discuss the many industry issues facing local broadcasters. The group gets together, has diverse backgrounds; they can share experiences, thoughts, strategies that they have, and it's an opportunity for us to meet periodically to raise those issues.

More fundamentally, it's an advocacy group, in my mind, that can help educate and socialize relevant ad tech issues in the industry on both the buy-sell and agency side. It also is an opportunity to bring together trading partners; that gives us the opportunity to talk to people that may be tangential to the industry and not understand some of the technical aspects of the ad process and I think that's highly beneficial to educate them as part of what this group can do.

Matrix has been a partner in introducing technology solutions to offer options to local broadcasters and we think that they are a good catalyst and a good partner to help support this committee and we appreciate their opportunity to give us this forum to raise these issues.

And then, the final thing that I would say is, this committee helps ensure local broadcasters will have the right tools and capabilities to meet the advertiser needs as the industry continues to evolve. 

Can you tell us why this council, why MASC?

Any opportunity that I can take to talk about industry issues with peers, to share their thoughts and experiences, is a welcome opportunity for me. It's educating me; learning what's happening in the industry and marketplace. Confirming some of the things that I suspect are happening and seeing how other people are dealing with those things. Obviously, we have a lot of issues to deal with, with our partners. We all pretty much have the same partners in the industry. Sharing those experiences collectively, working together to give feedback to those partners, is a real advantage, and again, this committee provides a forum for us to collectively share those ideas and share that feedback with our ad tech partners in the industry.

What are you hoping to gain from MASC? 

MASC can help us gain a lot of insights into practices in the industry that we need to look towards, as the industry looks to adopt impressions as currency, as we look to continue to gain workflow advantages in the transactional process between buyers and sellers, as we look to evolve the capabilities in terms of advanced advertising and bring digital-like experience to local broadcast- this group will help raise those issues and socialize those issues. I think any information that we can get out in the industry which can help advance the technology that is needed to support the evolution that is happening, is something that's going to be very beneficial.