Welcome to the Office

The Ad Sales department starts with Customer Service Representatives (CSR) on the bottom. They do a lot of work in a computer system called Gabriel where they move around "units" (basically commercial time) for different brands. They are in contact with different advertising agencies who represent different brands. They agencies have a budget from a brand that they allocate money to different channels to promote the brand to their target consumers. I have been working with a few CSR's to shadow their daily tasks. They communicate with different agencies to comply with all of their requests and specifics for times or shows that they want the commercial to air. The best way to describe working in teh computer system and moving around units is like looking at a puzzle.

Next are the Sales Service Executives (SSE) who are training to be an Account Executive (AE). AE's (and sometimes the SSE) go out to the agencies to bargain a good price for the commercials the brand will be purchasing. So basically, the SSE presents to the agency to tell them why VH1 is the best place for them to advertise because of their demographic; they come up with ideas that will entice the agency to choose spending their advertising budget with VH1. Meanwhile, after the deal and bargaining is made, CSR's must schedule all of the commercial time before it is sent to traffic.

There are then two VP's of Ad Sales, who each have their own team and oversee all that goes on.