A Forecaster's Journey: Challenges and Frustrations in a Media Company

A FORECASTER’S JOURNEY: CHALLENGES AND FRUSTRATIONS IN A MEDIA COMPANY By Layton W. Franko Forecasting media expenditures provide greater career challenges than consumer product forecasting … top of the line media expenditure (advertising expenditure in magazines, network TV, etc.) can be forecasted fairly well using standard Econometric techniques … individual product forecasting by event or by daypart (time of day) is done by knowing the classification of the business of an advertiser. I had a long career as a Forecaster for a number of media companies — ABC (the old American Broadcasting Company, now a part of Disney), Reuben H. Donnelley (the sales agent for the Yellow Pages) and McCann Erickson (the largest international advertising agency in the world). I can’t say that I planned my career that way; it just so happened! I got started in a typical manner like many other guys who were raised in New York City. I went straight from undergraduate school to an MBA program, then a 6 months active reserve obligation, and then into the labor force. I knew at that time that I liked working with numbers but not much else. I had a few short-lived jobs mainly in consumer ...