Case Study: How CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions Transformed Ad Operations with Burt
Overview
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada are Canada’s national public broadcasters, delivering trusted news, entertainment, and cultural programming across radio, television, and digital platforms to millions of Canadians every day in both French and English. As a large, complex media organization operating in an increasingly competitive digital advertising landscape, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions ad operations team manages vast volumes of data across campaigns, platforms, and partners.
Like many teams in digital advertising, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions faced a familiar challenge: too much data, too little time, and an overreliance on manual, spreadsheet-driven workflows. Reporting was time-consuming, insights were slow to surface, and optimizing campaigns at scale was becoming increasingly difficult. They needed a way to streamline operations, analyze performance more efficiently, and maximize revenue without adding operational overhead.
Burt helped transform the workflow by automating advertising reporting, centralizing data, and enabling faster, more actionable insights - unlocking a new era of efficiency for the ad operations team.
Challenges Before Burt
Before implementing Burt, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions’ ad operations team faced several operational challenges that made it difficult to move quickly and efficiently:
Manual Data Overload: Compiling campaign results in Excel and Google Sheets was slow and labor-intensive, limiting access to performance insights to just once or twice per campaign.
Fragmented Reporting: Managing data across multiple platforms required generating numerous separate reports, creating bottlenecks in analysis and decision-making.
Missed Optimization Opportunities: Without timely access to critical data, optimizations were often delayed, reducing overall campaign effectiveness and revenue potential.
“We relied heavily on manual spreadsheets to pull campaign results from multiple sources, which was time-consuming and required significant team effort. Because of that, reporting only happened once or twice during a campaign, which wasn’t ideal for optimization.” -Michelle Thibeault, Director, Ad Operations, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions.
The Burt Transformation
By integrating Burt, the ad operations team shifted from a reactive reporting model to a more proactive, insight-driven workflow - unlocking several meaningful improvements:
Seamless Data Integration: Burt aggregates data from multiple ad platforms into a centralized dashboard, eliminating the need for manual data entry and campaign data reconciliation.
Instant, Actionable Insights: Advertising benchmarks, site performance, and programmatic spend insights are now available at a glance, without waiting on manual reports.
Sales Team Empowerment: Sales teams can independently track campaign performance without relying on ad operations, reducing back-and-forth and freeing up time for higher-value work.
Customized Workflows: Flexible mappings and automated connections allow Burt to adapt to existing processes, rather than forcing the team to change how they work.
“With Burt, we can optimize campaigns running across multiple platforms using dashboards that give us quick access to benchmarks, site performance, and programmatic spend. It allows us to make informed decisions quickly, and sales teams can monitor performance on their own without relying on ad operations.”
Impact: Measurable Wins
Since transitioning from manual, spreadsheet-driven processes to Burt, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions has realized clear, measurable improvements across efficiency, accuracy, and access to data:
Significant Time Savings: Reports that previously took hours to compile can now be generated in seconds, saving the team an estimated 20+ hours per week.
Expanded Access to Insights: Teams now have access to data and insights that were previously inaccessible, enabling more comprehensive analysis and allowing reports and dashboards to be populated in minutes rather than requiring manual compilation across multiple reports.
Broader Data Accessibility: View-only access and advanced filtering allow more teams to analyze performance data independently, without disrupting ad operations workflows.
“Moving away from manual reporting has had a noticeable impact on both efficiency and data quality. We spend far less time validating numbers and far more time using the data to inform decisions across teams.”
What’s Next? The Future with Burt
CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions’s work with Burt continues to evolve. Looking ahead, the team plans to further automate advertising inventory forecasting workflows and reduce remaining manual reporting, while expanding deeper into regional STR analysis to unlock more granular performance insights.
As CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions builds on its foundation with Burt, the focus remains on creating a smarter, faster, and more automated ad operations environment one that can scale alongside the organization’s growing digital advertising needs.
“We’re now focusing on forecasting and regional STR - areas we couldn’t support manually or within our ad server before. With Burt, we see a real opportunity to continue expanding our insights and making a meaningful impact for the business.” -Michelle Thibeault, Director, Ad Operations, CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions.
Interested in modernizing your ad operations the way CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions has? Get in touch to learn how Burt can support your team.