Fairfax's top sales boss has calmed fears of a wholesale takeover by automated trading platforms, but says the media salesperson of the future will have to have a "pretty damn good" understanding of just about everything to survive.
While no one can yet say for certain the ultimate impact of automation on the workforce, private industry speculation has put the "efficiency" figure anywhere from 30% up to half. But Harrison dismissed the suggestion. "No, nowhere near [50%]," he said.
He went on to say any actual efficiencies from trading platforms from a bottom-line perspective were yet to materialise. "As with most of these technologies, until they get to scale you don't really see much in the way of efficiency.
"The people running these tools, they're often quite expensive, replacing maybe two salespeople but costing just as much. Clearly in the long run you'll see some efficiency, but to start with you might actually be going backwards in terms of cost per dollar."
Harrison said he didn't think anyone really knew when automated trading technology would get to scale. "I think it's pretty obvious that within the next couple of years a reasonable chunk of our business will be traded in that fashion.
"But even when I say it's a fair chunk of our business, I'm still talking about a minor part. I think it's safe to say that two, three, four years from now, most of our business will be handled in the same way [as it is now]."
But Harrison would not be drawn on what proportion of Fairfax's business was a "fair chunk", saying only it was "impossible to put a number on it at this point in time".
The result of automation is what he describes as the "bifurcation" of media sales, where the high-volume inventory is traded by the machines and the salespeople think strategically about bigger-picture, value-add creative solutions for clients.
"Every salesperson will have to have a pretty damn good understanding of all of the options available to marketers. You don't have to be experts in everything, but you have to understand all of the different options. You're not just pitching against the allocated budget of your channel anymore.
"It's probably a more interesting business to be working in than it ever has been in the past. When I started it was very confrontational between buyers and sellers, and you had a very narrow view. Now even at quite a junior level, clients really are talking more about the challenges in their business and increasingly asking owners, through their sales teams, to come up with solutions."
Following Fairfax's organisational restructure in April, Harrison was promoted to group sales director of the newly created Australian Publishing Media, which incorporates Metro Media, the Financial Review Group, Fairfax Regional Media, Agricultural Media and FCN NSW.
Fairfax is understood to be in talks with News Limited, Mi9 and Yahoo!7 to create a 'gang of four' premium ad exchange in a bid to counter Google and the media agency-owned demand-side platforms, with Microsoft-backed AppNexus to provide the platform.
To find out more about Fairfax's strategy and what's in store for the future of media sales, grab tickets to the Media Sales Summit on 22 May. The one-day event will bring together the industry's leading figures to crack the big issues and steer you through the coming decade.
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