Operative Blog

We are thrilled to share the news that Operative won a 2012 Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Award for Best Integration Solution!

For media companies, it is simply too difficult and too costly to execute a digital ad sale today and the industry has reached the point where things have to change and become much simpler. More specifically, publishers have come to realize that if they want to grow, it does not make sense to buy the next shiny new ad technology without considering how it will be absorbed with all of their other core systems and processes. Operative exists as a company to answer this demand and help our customers succeed in this challenging, dynamic digital market.

That’s why this prestigious recognition for our flagship product, Operative.One, is particularly gratifying for us. Since Day 1, it’s been our core belief that in order to reduce the complexity of running a media company, disparate technology and processes need to be brought together. So over the past few years, we’ve focused on making it easy for publishers to do just that, by focusing on building relationships and integrations with key industry tech players such as Salesforce, Google, and Appnexus.

Congratulations to our Product and Engineering teams for their outstanding work! We also would like to extend a big thank you to the SIIA for this wonderful recognition.

A full press release announcing this news can be found here.

MIKE LEO
CEO & President

@rmikel

mleo@operative.com

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

All Things D: Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
Can former Fox Interactive Media exec Ross Levinsohn convince the board he’s got what it takes to be more than Yahoo’s interim CEO? With this first memo to the company, you can judge for yourself…

Mashable: New York City Now Fastest Growing Tech Hub
Watch out Silicon Valley, the big apple is onto you. According to the Center for an Urban Future, New York City almost doubled its technology footprint in just one year and outpaced private sector job growth by a factor of 7. Check out the infographic for more details behind the city’s explosive tech growth

Romenesko: Gawker Moves Towards A New Business Model
In a memo to ‘All Staff’ last Thursday, Gawker founder Nick Denton discussed a number of changes. The meat of the message: Gawker is determined to seek revenue outside of the traditional banner ad model. Check out where the revenue is expected to come from.

ClickZ: Romney Team Hiring ‘A Lot’ of Digital Staff
#MittRomney camp heating up the general election competition by going digital. #BarackObama to fear?

Ad Age: How Romantic! A Marriage Proposal Via Banner Ad
The ad industry’s equivalent of proposing on the Jumbotron. Luckily she said yes and this didn’t end up on YouTube.

CNN Money: Bing Fires At Google With New Social Search
Microsoft continues its battle royale with Google, announcing it will also integrate results from your social circles into search query results. Better late than never: while Google displays results only from Google+ posts, Bing works with multiple social networks, including Twitter,Google+ and Facebook.

The New York Times: Mixing Ad and Comedy Shorts Online for TBS
TBS is teaming up with the Will Arnett and Jason Bateman owned DumbDumb Co. to produce comedic digital shorts that integrates brands into the storylines. It’s a great example of digital advertising stepping up the engagement level.

Digiday: Why Native Ad Formats Are The Future
According to Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, native ad formats (e.g. Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Sponsored Stories on Facebook, Paid Discovery on StumbleUpon) are changing the flow of advertiser dollars. How can publishers integrate native monetization strategies of their own?

SEOMoz: The Real Impact of the Google SmartPhone Crawler (Part 3): Avoiding Mobile Mis-Indexing
Cindy Krum, CEO & Founder, MobileMoxie LLC discusses best practices when it comes to mobile indexing and Google’s wonderful bot.

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

TechCrunch: The Weather Channel’s Revamped Website Goes Social, Tells You When It Will Rain
Know that “ugh” feeling when it’s sunny all week only for it to rain on the weekend? Well, now the Weather Channel allows you to socialize your weather-related frustration to all your friends with a fancy new website redesign. Looking good!

iMediaConnection: 4 Ways To Monetize Your Mobile Site
With “the third screen” becoming an omnipresent part of the consumer experience, mobile can no longer be overlooked as its own distinct medium. Mobile Theory’s CEO Scott Swanson gives his top tips on creating a unique mobile branding experience.

eMarketer: Marketers Attempt to Align Online Video and TV Campaigns
Adapt.TV and Digiday join forces to uncover what agencies are leveraging to marry online video and TV metrics. Spoiler alert: 73% report brand engagement as their primary video campaign metric, over brand lift and clickthroughs.

Mashable: Barnes & Noble Says Kindle’s ‘Not That Good in Bed’
The Nook creates some bedroom drama with Amazon.

Digiday: Publishers: Facebook Is Your New Ad Role Model
Facebook is doing more than revolutionizing social interaction. It’s also providing publishers with powerful lessons on how to monetize their user data. Developing a deep understanding into how customers engage and how to connect users to sponsors is a lesson any publisher can learn.

Business Insider: The Smartest People In Tech Are Ridiculing Scott Thompson And Yahoo
Oh man, yet another Yahoo! dilemma….

paidContent: Cable’s Answer To The NewFront? Discovery Buys Revision3
Congrats to our clients Discovery Channel and Revision3 for coming together to take on the rapidly converging world of broadcast and video. It’s not a trend anymore, it’s a reality.

Adweek: Text Message Marketing Is Still A Thing
You don’t hear much about it, and it definitely isn’t getting the bulk of anyone’s ad spend, but it hasn’t disappeared altogether. See how advertisers are exploring innovative tactics such as “geofencing” – Jet Blue sends texts to users once they enter an airport terminal.

In our recent webcast on Winning Ad Ops Strategies, we received many questions from the audience about metrics, so I wanted to dive a little deeper on the topic. There are two main buckets of metrics that organizations need to track: 1)Performance and 2) Volume.  Performance metrics are quality related statistics that you would report to your executives such as accuracy rates, compliance to Service Level Agreements (SLAs), revenue exposure due to errors and turnaround time. Volume metrics track the amount of work that your team is handling such as number of campaigns/lines, revisions and time spent on campaign management. For this post, we’re going to discuss the Performance side as we’ll tackle Volume metrics in a subsequent post.

Performance metrics are critical to your organization so that you can confidently report to how well your team is executing its core job. The number of questions we received during the Q&A session of our webcast brought to our attention that there are many ad ops professionals that want to improve their ability to track these metrics, but aren’t quite sure how to get started. Accuracy rate is probably the most important metric to start with so here are a few best practices that I wanted to share on the issue.

Calculating Your Accuracy Rate

• Start by recording all errors on a weekly basis (by campaign or placement) and categorizing them by type (caused by creative, targeting, click tracker etc.). Also make sure you validate each error so that your data is clean.
• Now that you have data, you can then analyze it for trends and identify Key Performance Indicators. You will be able to report on your accuracy rate (100% – (# errors/placements)), the most frequent types of errors, how much revenue is put at risk etc.
• Next, go deeper by performing root cause analysis on the most pressing areas where improvement is needed.
• Create solutions and implement preventive measures.
• Lastly, continue to monitor, report on improvement and take further action when needed.

Performance metrics are the key to getting that seat at the executive table because it builds confidence in your team and shows that you may be ready to broaden your focus to revenue impacting projects. It is part of the natural maturation process for ad ops to want better metrics and I’m excited to see more organizations striving to get there. After your team commits to tracking and reporting, you’ll soon be able to produce a dashboard as pictured below.  The suggestions above can get you started in the right direction, but if you’d like to discuss further then please reach out to us or leave a comment to share an opinion.  In a follow up post, I will discuss Volume metrics, which are critical to optimizing the workload your team is handling.

      JOHN BRIAR
 EVP, Business Operations

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

Bussinessweek: Coming Soon to Your Desktop at Work: Ads
Bloomberg spotlights SaaS companies that have free software for users and sell ads inside the program to generate revenue. With a highly targeted audience, CPM rates are much higher, but revenue is much less predictable – making it a risky yet intriguing business model.

Ad Age: Click-Through Rates May Matter Even Less Than We Thought
Science! Analysts take a look at conversion rates from clicks and find users that hover over an ad are more likely to buy. Get ready for the CPH, cost per hover.

Business Insider: YouTube Has The Ultimate Silicon Valley Office, Complete With Swimming Pool and Two-Story Slide
Facebook’s offices aren’t the only ones with the goods. Check out what it’s like to work for YouTube.

CFOWorld: And You Thought Mobile Advertising Was About Mobile 
A new report from Strategy Analytics shows that revenue from in-app advertising ($1.7 billion) tops display ads on the mobile web ($934 million). Is your app ad strategy ready to propel your mobile growth?

Adotas: Can We Be Friends? Delivering Active and Authentic Audiences Through Social Sharing
Studies show peer referrals are trusted by 90% of consumers, whereas paid advertising is trusted by only 14%. Now it’s up to advertisers to learn how to build trust in these social communities.

Business Insider: Dove Should Retract Its Hugely Misleading Facebook Ad Campaign
Imagine if, by liking Dove’s page on Facebook, you would cause the ads served to your friends on Facebook to transform into uplifting ego boosts. That’s the promise Dove makes in a recent ad campaign, the only problem being that it’s a complete lie. Check out the misleading video.

AdExchanger: The Digital Industry Needs to Innovate For Consumers
In response to last week’s post on whether or not online can ever work for branding, David Levy of Neu Venture Capital offers compelling rationale for why digital branding must eventually work. The problem is not the medium, but how it is currently being utilized. Levy closes with a few solutions on how we as an industry can improve.

Ad Age: Why Digital Ad Forecasts Are Irrelevant: The Future Is Not Display Ads 
Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are reinventing the way advertisers reach their audiences. This presents a challenge for publishers who rely on traditional display advertising as a business model. The article predicts a quick demise, but others aren’t so sure. Will display burn out or just fade away? Or is it here to stay?

For a rare look into how premium media organizations approach ad operations, please view our webcast panel discussion with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solution’s Manager of Account Services, Heather Miranda, and Kelley Blue Book’s VP of Advertising Operations, Melissa Bertram. Heather and Melissa discuss topics including the challenges facing ad operations today, which metrics are most important to track, how ad operations will evolve in the future, as well as examples of recent successful initiatives.

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

AdWeek: Honda Ad Campaign Will Pay You To Stop Using That Damn Pinterest
Honda is offering $500 each to the most active pinners if they’ll take a 24-hour “Pintermission” to actually go out and do stuff they’ve been pinning about. It can be a fine line between using social media in a campaign and implying its users are losers, but they pull it off.

Paid Content: Hulu Kicks Off Upfront Push for Piece of $72B-plus TV Ad Market
Hulu tries to prove again that “content is king” by adding new original material to its platform and selling ads against it just like the networks…at an upfront.

TheAtlantic: In Praise of Ignorance: Why is it OK to Tweet ‘Who is Dick Clark’?
Reacting to Dick Clark’s death, many young people chose to blindly tweet instead of googling his profile. What does this embrace of ignorance mean for how information obtained? The Atlantic investigates.

MediaPost: Viacom Bets On ‘Skinny Leaderboard’ To Up Tablet Content, Ads 
Have you seen the “skinny leaderboard” ad format from Viacom?

Viral Article of the Week: The 21 Absolute Worst Things In The World

Business Insider: Here’s One Reason Why Google’s Ad Prices May Be Dropping
Google’s ad prices are dropping and Facebook’s are rising. This BI article delivers a different story than which Google is preaching from an undisclosed source knowledgeable in Google’s ad business.

Digiday: Are Agency Trading Desks Headed for Trouble?
Cynicism rising. Former trading desk executives notice trading desks are losing their luster. Brands, too, are digging in and wising up.

Ad Age: Tumblr Announces First Foray Into Paid Advertising
Advertisers will be tumbling into one of the hottest spaces in the blogosphere - Tumblr. Yes, the news out of Ad Age’s Digital Conference is that Tumblr’s ’Radar” will now be available for sponsorship. Let’s start the bidding at…

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

Business Insider: How Instagram Planned To Make Money Before It Was Snatched By Facebook
Just prior to Facebook’s $1billion acquisition of his company on April 9th, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom spoke with Business Insider about how his team approached developing a unique and efficient experience for advertisers within its UI.

Ad Age: BreakUpWithYourAdAgency.com: Funny Stunt or Distressing Gag?
Why would an ad agency launch a site intended to be used by advertisers to “break up” with their agencies? There’s a method to their madness – the Baton Rouge-based 10 person shop Rockit Science just figured out how to become the focus of nationwide attention.

MediaPost: New Video Ad Metric Doesn’t Have You at Hello, Suggests You Complete Me
According to new research from Vindico, it’s the “completes” that count when it comes to online video advertising. Click-through rates…meh.

USA Today: Michigan’s Big House to Have Its Own Twitter Hashtag
Michigan is the second school to advertise a twitter hashtag on its field during a game in an effort to “build brand loyalty and grow the digital audience.” Amazing that a public institution is doing this before any US professional sports league!

Ad Age: Your Marketing Machine: What You Need to Know About Ad Tech ‘Stacks’
Rebecca Lieb (@lieblink) explores advertisers’ dilemma when shopping for digital marketing solutions: visit local specialty stores or a one-stop supermarket? Lieb calls upon our very own CEO Mike Leo (@rmikel) to help evaluate the latter option known to many as ‘stacks’. Read on to learn what he has to say.

MediaPost:Readers Respond to Newspapers’ Digital Ads
An interesting survey commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). Results re-affirm our thoughts: convergence between print and digital is inevitable.

Mashable: Time Out New York Makes a Major Bet on ECommerce
Time Out New York expands its inventory from ads into ticket sales and restaurant reservations.

The Atlantic: The Justice Department Just Made Jeff Bezos Dictator-for-Life
“For the next two years, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will be free to dictate the price of eBooks across much of the publishing industry.”

Good Morning!

Bringing you highlights from the IAB, paidContent, Digiday, AdAge, and more from the prior week. Have something to say? We’d love to hear from you!

The Los Angeles Times: Five Large Magazine Publishers Team Up to Offer the “Netflix” for Magazines
Time, Conde Nast, Hearst, News Corp and Meredith jointly release a tablet app giving unlimited access to 32 magazines for $14.99 a month. The rest of the publishing world will be watching closely as this could change how tablet users buy digital content.

Business Insider:  What It’s Like Being In One of Those Meetings Where Yahoo’s CEO Chews Everyone OutOne thing’s for sure – you don’t want to be one of the execs in the same room as Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson just before they are about to fire 2,000 people.

AdWeek: More Newspapers Hopeful about Paid Content, Thanks to Tablets
Cox Media Group’s President Doug Franklin says tablets are “a pathway to the digital migration”. As print publishers look for ways to shift their business towards digital, paid iPad apps are helping bring in revenue while also better preserving the actual look of the print newspaper.

eMarketer: Pandora Connects Brands with Bands and Fans
Pandora is on the digital forefront when it comes to leveraging their digital platforms for advertising revenue. This Q & A session with Heidi Browning, Senior Vice President of Strategic Solutions, Pandora is a must read.

AdWeek: Bloomberg and Reuters: The Future of News
Lucia Moses looks at how Bloomberg and Reuters have leveraged their roles as financial data providers to become the news market’s dominant players in the post-print world.