In November, Michael Collins joined Locality as its first Chief Executive Officer, signaling a pivotal new chapter for the company and for the broader local media marketplace. His appointment comes at a time of rapid transformation across the television ecosystem, as streaming and broadcast continue to converge and advertisers demand more unified, performance-driven solutions. Collins shares his perspective on the urgent upgrades needed to modernize local ad buying, the challenges of bridging fragmented platforms, and his vision for transforming local advertising.
The current local ad buying system remains very siloed. Right now, buying and platform structures are rigid, organized by channels rather than audiences or outcomes. The technology exists to target and measure audiences holistically, but the operations haven’t caught up.
What’s needed now are tools that can unify execution, tools that support open APIs, standardized data formats, and centralized performance views. We also need to integrate real-time measurement and optimization into the core of local workflows. That feedback loop – seeing what’s working and adjusting on the fly – is what will drive the next leap in performance. This is what we are aiming to achieve.
As consumer behavior, AI, and technology continue to reshape the local advertising ecosystem, the industry has a tremendous opportunity—and responsibility—to evolve. My vision for Locality is to lead this evolution by transforming what has historically been a fragmented, channel‑centric marketplace into a unified, performance‑driven platform rooted in how consumers engage with media.
Too often, the conversation defaults to broadcast versus streaming, but consumer behavior—and advertisers’ ability to influence that behavior—remains consistent across channels. The immersive nature of sight‑sound‑motion content delivered by television create moments of unmatched engagement. Locality’s role is to help brands harness that power to engage consumers in these moments. Achieving this requires building a cohesive infrastructure that allows advertisers to plan, activate, and measure campaigns seamlessly across both broadcast and streaming through a single, streamlined workflow.
My top priority is to simplify and modernize the entire local media process—planning, buying, measuring—so it operates with the same precision and accountability as national media, while unlocking the unique strength of local: its ability to connect brands with real people, in real communities, in the moments that matter most. When we remove friction and elevate performance, we not only strengthen local advertising—we expand its value for marketers and audiences alike.
The biggest challenge is interoperability, different platforms report different measurement KPIs, and that creates friction for advertisers, planners, marketers, and even us in the industry. When we think about how to bridge broadcast and streaming, we have to think about more than access to inventory and go one step further to think about data, metrics, and KPIs, while also taking into consideration formats, and workflows so that advertisers can execute a campaign once and have it optimized everywhere.
At Locality, we don’t think of ourselves as a broadcast or streaming company, but as a company focused on the unique consumer behaviors in the television environment. That shift in mindset drives how we bridge platforms.
The opportunity lies in using tools like ACR to normalize data across formats. With LocalX, we’ve created a centralized platform that integrates ACR-powered deduplication with unified planning, pacing, and attribution. The broader ecosystem remains fragmented, with varying inventory, data, and reporting standards, but LocalX transforms those disparate inputs into clear, actionable insights. By consolidating campaign activity into one streamlined environment, we’re enabling advertisers to move beyond impression counts and toward real-time performance visibility that drives smarter, faster decisions.
As an industry, we need to continue to evolve our thinking beyond channels and focus on audiences and behaviors. The technology to target and measure locally is largely here, but interoperability and standardization across the buy side needs to evolve.
Locality is working to change that. We’ve invested in our own ID framework, integrating ACR and other data sources, and building platforms like LocalX to make performance not just measurable, but actionable. When advertisers can clearly see who they’ve reached, how it performed, and what to do next, all in one place, that’s what builds confidence.
Ultimately, advertisers want to invest where they can see both scale and relevance. Our job is to make that possible locally, to help them connect with real people, in real communities, with real results. That’s when local moves from a budget line item to a strategic advertising driver.
The heart of local advertising has always been its proximity to people’s lives, its ability to connect with the community in a meaningful way. As we go more digital, that value doesn’t go away, it gets amplified when paired with precision and performance.
When we deliver relevant messages in trusted, local environments, supported by data and dynamic creative, we create a more resonant and measurable impact. Locality is positioned to bring these worlds together: we pair decades of local media expertise with the infrastructure, data, and tools needed to plan, activate, and measure campaigns holistically across platforms.
That’s how we’ll redefine local, not as a media type, but as a powerful strategy for brands of any size to reach and influence consumers with both meaning and precision.
