• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 30, 2015

That’s what big publishers sales organizations are trying to create vis a vis better integration of their internal sales organization resources -- both man and machine, according to speakers on the opening panel at the Publishing Insider Summit in Key Largo this morning.

We want to make it “as seamless as possible for advertisers,” Chip Schenck, VP of Programmatic Sales and Strategy, Meredith said, describing the goal as “frictionless buying.”

Easier said than done for publishers’ sales organizations that are still steeped in direct selling and are rapidly accelerating their investments and integration with programmatic selling systems.

“Programmatic is a huge part of our revenue now, so we’ve had to address that,” concurred Zach Friedman, VP, Digital Ad Sales, Fox News Channel, noting that Fox has “doubled” its programmatic resources in the past 18 months. The trick, he said, is creating greater integration between the direct-selling (ie. people) team and the programmatic resources (ie. machines).

“We are all one unified sales team,” Friedman said, adding that Fox has had to train its sales people on new “skillsets” to incorporate the programmatic side.

“We’ve had to rethink, take a step back, allocate some resources,” he said.