Operative Blog

Kamal Chadha (CBS Interactive)- Panelist

Tim Messier (The Weather Channel Interactive)- Panelist

Steve Sullivan (Microsoft Advertising)- Moderator

As an industry, we’ve made strides in discrepancy management by implementing guidelines and best practice processes.  But the issue of discrepancies is still catastrophic.  Between human error and mapping line items to placement ID’s, manual processes and lack of automation only continue to perpetuate the impact of discrepancies.

Real life example: Today, the publisher gets the tag from the agency, and inserts the tag into the ad server.  For each tag, there is an associated publisher #.  How do you sync the tags with the publisher #, and report on the two?  Answer: more reporting options.

1. Madison, the CBS Interactive media custom server, collects all line item information.
2. Weather.com uses Solbright and passes a flight ID to the ad server for unique information.
3. Schedule standardized reports that will help you get in front of these issues before billing at the end of the month.
4. The last option is reporting through access to the ad server’s API.  CBS Interactive’s goal is to have an API automatic system that pulls 3rd party numbers every night with an alert function that highlights areas of concern.  There’s a new solution on the market with similar functionality.

Next steps- get the IAB council back together.  Educate the industry on possible solutions such as AdJuster and Operative.One Campaign360. Finally, establish partnerships that will ease the discrepancy pain.