Operative Blog

Ad Operations Training

Within the Ad Ops community, the turnover of people coming in and leaving can be nonstop.  It might seem like you are always training the newbie.  Training new traffickers can be a daunting task if you approach your employees with an overload of information.  The 5 steps below are guidelines we follow at Operative, that have proved to be incredibly beneficial to traffickers, as well as our customers.

1. Set the stage for what lies ahead

Learning to traffic is like learning a new language.  And with that learning, there can be a fair amount of initial frustration.  To combat this, communicate with your new trafficker throughout the entire training. Provide clear direction.  Take things one step at a time and don’t overwhelm them.  Always encourage questions!  If they don’t feel like they can ask you questions continuously, they will develop bad habits that could negatively affect your campaigns.

2. Reinforce the need for multi-tasking

Without the ability to manage several projects at the same time, your new trafficker will feel the weight of the pressure.  At first, start them off with simple projects like QA’ing creative or setting up a single Ad in the Ad Server.  After they grow comfortable with those tasks, and you are comfortable with their progress, add levels to their trafficking and so on.  Soon enough they will be trafficking a small campaign without even realizing how much they accomplished in a short amount of time.

3. Pay attention to detail

A main component of our day-to-day work as traffickers is spent on the details of a request.  Whether the details are simply the naming convention of a creative or the specific targeting that an entire campaign needs to achieve, the attention to detail is what sets apart traffickers.  When starting out with a new trafficker, reinforce the importance of details.  Slight pressure helps the traffickers learn faster because they are more sensitive to the task at hand.

4. Plan for errors           

Hmmm…errors.  While this is a touchy subject with all traffickers, errors are inevitable and unavoidable because our job function is very hands-on and extremely manual.  The challenge is to make sure to move on after an error is made and learn from your mistakes.  Much like a quarterback in football, throwing an interception is a momentary mistake but you have to get right back up, finish the game, and not dwell on it.

5. Prepare to be ‘last in line’

Lastly, it is critical to alert your trafficker that he or she is the last person on the assembly line of implementing an ad and ensuring it delivers on the web site properly.  What we do is considered the ‘finished product’ and with that, comes the need for increased visibility and accountability.  As traffickers, we need to communicate, juggle tasks, receive instruction, give feedback, and finish the project at hand on time and without error.

Once you complete these tasks, take a step back, see how your new trafficker is doing and then get ready for that next training because there is always someone else is waiting in the wings.

For more information, please click here.

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Patrick Bevilacqua, Operations Manager, Operative

Operative provides outsourced Ad Operations for both agencies and publishers across the globe. Patrick Bevilacqua one of Operative’s senior technical and tactical experts for all things Agency, providing advice to agency clients on a verity of subject matters including campaign and creative performance, troubleshooting, click tracking, reporting and rich media guidance.

The world of creative in online advertising is constantly evolving. It seems that every month we’re reading about new types of creative that can be implemented on a publisher’s web site. While many still use plain images to do their advertising (and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that!), we are beginning to see that advertiser’s want to directly engage the user…and when they do, it leads to quantifiable results.

While Flash® is still considered ‘Rich Media’ by many, it is quickly becoming ‘standard’ creative in this day and age. Flash® ads are now so common that even as a user myself, I do not feel that it captivates my attention like many of the newer brands of creative – ads such as push-downs, interstitials, and floating ads, while sometimes annoying to the user, also present a better opportunity to capture the user’s attention.

So if you are a publisher and want to get involved in the freshest types of rich media, here are 3 things to know so that you aren’t caught off-guard by the newest creative types.

1. Rich Media Vendors are the way to go.

If you’ve yet to take a dive into the world of rich media, know that there are specialists out there whose core competency is building and serving high-end rich media. Providers such as Pointroll, Media Mind(formerly Eyeblaster) and Eyewonder specialize in this type of work, and can handle any questions you may have about rich media as well as assist you and your advertiser in the creation of your product. Operative has developed partnerships with several of these vendors as well- reach out to us if you would like an introduction!

2. Rich Media creative is served differently than standard creative.

Standard ads are served through an ad tag on your website. These ad tags contain a specific size and directly correlate to a specific position on your page. There is very little complexity here. When delving into a high-end rich media creative, the equation changes. Take a “pushdown” for instance:  This ad is meant to load as a standard ad, but when you mouse over it, it “pushes” the content of your page down as the ad expands to a greater size. To create this type of movement, the code within the ad interacts with the code on your web page, creating this action. Obviously this can be a complicated process, which leads us to…

3. There will be some frustrations!

Most publishers can attest to the struggles obtaining creative in time for an on-time campaign launch. When using rich media, the struggle may increase. As a publisher, if you know you are going to be using rich media, it is best to plan for it! Rich media creative often require extensive testing in a custom set-up test environment (make sure you have one!) before setting the creative live to your actual web page. These ads often do not work the way you expect them to on the first try, so it’s imperative to test them before launch. This, of course, means you’ll need the creative in your hands well before the launch- so make sure you plan ahead for this when scheduling campaigns and working with a creative developer!

Diving head-first into the world of rich media is an exciting step for every publisher…and can lead to increased revenue. But know that a lot of work, and often times, a lot of patience is a part of the package! All in all however, employing rich media on your site can be a tremendous benefit to both you (higher CPMs), and your advertisers (more customers)!

For more information, please click here.

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Blogged by Christopher Lane, Operations Manager

Operative provides outsourced Ad Operations for both agencies and publishers across the globe. Chris Lane is one of Operative’s senior technical and tactical experts for all things Publisher, providing advice to publisher clients on a variety of subject matters including campaign performance to troubleshooting and product optimization.

Recently, an Ad Operations colleague at a publisher contacted me about ad discrepancies.  They started preparing for end of month billing:

• pulling their primary ad server campaign delivery reports
• pulling 3rd party ad server campaign delivery reports
• compressing the data from ad serving sources, and
• sending it all off to Finance for reconciliation. 

The publisher wanted to know, “Where exactly do discrepancies come from?  What causes them?”

After a long discussion about some of the known causes of discrepancies, including:

1. The daisy chain effect
2. Ad blockers
3. Defaulting
4. Multiple definitions of an ‘ad impression’

the publisher then said, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by the daisy chain effect.”  In an attempt to draw a parallel between online ad discrepancies and real life, I came up with the below scenario.  Enjoy!

…and for those of you that I confused even more- I apologize- it’s not an easy concept to grasp.  For those who would like to carry on a dialog, post a message for me.

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The local high school decided to award their students with a treat. The principal called the owner of a concert hall, and finagled a deal for 1000 of his students to go see Britney live. The owner said it was OK to pay him after the show, and the principal said that was fine, he would have his assistant, Mary Pritchard, collect tickets at the door, and Erin Bain, a boy on suspension, count each student as he seated them. Then they would pay the owner an agreed price per student.

That night, Charles McSorley had kids piling up at the concert hall where he worked the door. As each approached him he gave them explicit directions to the box office, right down the hall and to the right, and added a tally of the students to his notebook. Entering the building, the concert goers approached the box office one by one, where Dr. Frank Payne checked their IDs for their age, and sent anyone under 16 to talk to Alex Nevins a little further down the hall to ask if he had any shows available for them to see. The rest were given a ticket to the Britney concert in theater 1, through a door to his left, past the bathrooms and the concessions. The Britney fans flocked to the entrance of theater 1, where Mary Pritchard collected their tickets, and gave them each a form with the instructions to write their name on it and then give it to Dr. Frank Payne on the way out if they liked the show (Payne would then take it upon himself to tell Mary). Finally, Erin Bain escorted each of them to their rows where they could watch the show, thumbing his trusty clicker as each was seated.

The following morning, the crew met up to figure out how well they’d done the night before. Charles had diligently tallied every patron, and said that he had let in 1000 people. Dr. Payne checked the register for the tickets he’d sold, and said that 150 had been turned away to Alex Nevins, and that 840 had been sold tickets to the Britney concert. Mary had kept all of the stubs from the Britney fanatics, and had 750 of them. Erin lifted up his clicker and smiled, having seated 720. Alex, with a shoe-box full of assorted receipts, rattled off three additional shows that he’d sent the youngins to, and how much he was able to talk each into paying. Frank then remembered the happy customers leaving the show, and that three of them had even handed him the form with their name on it. Mary frowned, because Frank had only handed her two of them the night before.

For how many tickets is the principal responsible for paying the concert hall owner?

For more information, please click here.

The end of a decade.  A time for prediction, review and a double dose of ‘best of’ lists.   So, let’s think… just what does the future hold?

Well, Spain will win the World Cup.  In the UK, Conservatives will win the General Election.  And, according to this Government commissioned report, we’re set for fewer butchers but more prosthetic limbs.

As for the Online Advertising world, it seems as if just about everyone has thrown their hat into the ring.  There was one announcement which caught my eye in Q4 I which feel might impact in 2010.  Google announced a new tool for advertisers called ‘Insights’.  This analytics suite is similar to Atlas’ own ‘Engagement Mapping’ tool and helps measure the effectiveness of display campaigns by examining the entire conversion funnel. This technology hasn’t quite hit its stride, so if you’ve not encountered this as yet: It’s time for a quick primer.  A ‘review’ if you will.

Since the online equivalent of the big-bang, the capacity for advertising on the internet has expanded into some boundless ether.  This constant state of change means that the cost of online ad space has also had to evolve.

Now there are a vast number of variables that determine the price of this inventory.  But despite what an Ad Sales Executive might tell you, this price is ultimately driven by the bar graphs on the advertiser’s report.  As the old adage goes – “It’s only worth what someone is willing to pay”.

The early adoption of buying a number of ad impressions (CPM) proved to be self-defeating in some respects.  As more web pages appeared online, advertisers witnessed diminishing returns and demanded more proof that campaigns were performing.  Establishing a cost model based on the numbers of user clicks (CPC) helps to validate an ROI.  But whilst this kept the acronym fanboys happy, it also raises as many questions as it answers.  Essentially this amounted to a glut of resellers tripping over themselves to get to the front of the queue to register your click and take your order online.  Cue the rise and rise of Search Engine Marketing (read: Google).

Post-click tracking has helped advertisers validate these clicks by identifying (anonymously of course) which users actually ‘converted’ e.g. went on to buy a book, sign up for the newsletter etc.  Here we can see a real correlation between the ad and the sale.  As a result online inventory is now commonly sold on a CPA basis (cost per action) i.e. a website will display your banners ‘for free’ but will take a payment based on resulting sales performance.  CPA deals represent a guaranteed return for your advertising budget.  Everyone’s happy right? <shakes head>.

This pricing scenario has thrown up its own unique conundrum.  When an online ad campaign appears across several websites, it’s possible that a user may see, or click the ad more than once.  Now should the user ‘convert’ (i.e. make the jump from clicking an ad to purchasing a product) which website should take payment for a successful sale?

Currently the general consensus is as follows: A successful sale will be acknowledged to the last / most recent click as this is assumed to be the most valid.

This ‘last click’ methodology is flawed as it ignores user engagement.  A user could see a banner displaying a ‘half price sale’ promotion on 5 different occasions – each in premium positions across several publisher sites.  It’s possible the promotional message has successfully registered with the user via highly interactive rich media ads.  If / when they decide it’s time to make a purchase, what do they do?  What would you do?  Well it’s pretty common to ‘google’ the advertiser’s website and purchase.  Payment for the conversion is therefore collected by Google/the reseller and not the websites who originally displayed the ads.

These new tools help calculate the value of all media exposure, allowing marketers to uncover deeper insights into each touch point.  Thus potentially giving credit (and by that I mean payment, not just a smile and nod) to the publishers displaying the ads.  Given that the analysis of user engagement is a complicated one, there will be no simple replacement for the ‘last click’ methodology.  I don’t expect Publishers/Advertisers/IAB to unanimously agree a ‘one-size fits all’ solution – but it does arm advertisers and agencies with more information to make purchasing decisions, and ultimately this will reflect in the price of the ad space.

So that’s it, a prediction, a review… I don’t have a ‘best of’ list.  There are too many of them anyway (but if I did Mamma Mia wouldn’t be anywhere near it!).

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Blogged by Jonathan Hall

Operative provides outsourced Ad Operations not only for publishers, but for a number of major Agencies across the globe. Jonathan Hall is one of Operative’s senior technical experts for all things Agency, providing advice to agency clients on a variety of subject matters including campaign planning and execution to report generation and troubleshooting.

I always thought, the idea of adverts was to ‘talk’ to someone, but not expect any reply. Like a big ‘talking at’ to anyone who might listen, see, sense…ignore. It was a big reciprocal recite, an invite, that expected no real R.S.V.P, just some subconscious triggering, that might sway an individuals future purchase.

We had TV, print, radio, all targeting large audiences. Yet with the growth of the internet, and how this has now pervaded the advertising eyeball, there’s the immense possibility to flip this ‘one ad to millions’ ratio.

Rather than one ad targeting 1000’s, you can have a multitude of ads, all occupying that same space, but targeted to an individual.

With the current economic climate, advertising revenues are struggling, and advertisers want more for their money: they want clicks, conversions. Yet it’s often the case, that publishers still struggle with configuring their ad servers to maximise their potential, and give more back to their advertisers. If anything, an ad server can appear to a publisher, like another layer of complexity, that’s used as a pawn within the ongoing clashes between editorial, online production and sales teams.

Perhaps understandably, many publishers through bad early experiences with CPA deals flooding their inventory over one campaign, shy away from looking at how to create more successful click rates, and user defined wants, and prefer the more sedentary impression based selling of sections, much like a magazine or paper. In many ways, this is just a current compromise, and to be fair it does the job, but can it remain ever so?

Perhaps the key to successful future revenue generation and advertising is to change one’s perspective of it.

Rather than viewing it as a static revenue tool, whose only other purpose seems to be to annoy editorial across the board with yet more webspace given over to ad slots and ‘advertisement’ titles, perhaps it’s better viewed as an opportunity to involve an audience, with a medium that’s bidirectional, interactive and non repetitively un reciprocal?

Ad servers allow such a variety of targeting, and integration possibilities, that should allow the website to build up a record of well trodden ‘paths’ and track their users surfing behaviour. So you should be able to give information to those who want it.

Where paths intersect, gives the chance to layer the targeting of just one ad slot, and the possibility to create a multitude of targeted packages that are more likely to be relevant to a user. Just by doing this, the revenue generation potential of just one ad slot, can be increased immensely. Many websites have a vast amount of information about their users, from subscriptions, buying habits etc, but this is very rarely integrated with their ad servers. This is after all, information that won’t cause privacy headaches, since their users submitted this information freely.

By adding a series of dynamically generated keywords into ad server tags, based on variables obtained by subscription information and past buying habits, adverts can track a user’s behaviour, increasing the chance of an ad having a click through.

For instance a shopping site, that can collect checkout information, can then adapt that user’s future ad experience, related on what their shopping habits have been recently. Adverts become relevant for them, and their user demographics can also be used in conjunction with this; local area targeting, gender, family size etc. So one ad slot, can then serve a multitude of targeted ads, to a whole host of different targeted audience segments, for every one impression it serves, rather than one ad for all, per impression.

With advances in flash and video, these targeted adverts can almost be like ‘microworlds’ or ‘mini info opportunities’, that allow a user to configure, adapt, and research various options for a product, or an idea or even argument, depending on a site’s content. All of these interactions can be tracked and harnessed into meaningful data, and used to sharpen up targeting, and ultimately make adverts more relevant and useful to a user.

Perhaps the key to successful online advertising in future is less ads, and more interaction, with better targeting and a good dose of subtlety.

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Blogged by Mark Hudspith

As an integral part of Operative’s managed services team, Mark is one of our most experienced Ad Operations Managers, working with global and local clients utilising multiple adervers and rich media creatives.

Successful campaign management is essential to generating current and future revenue for all publishers, large and small. Fulfilling the terms of your contract(s) with the advertiser will ensure you have a shot at the total media buy and develop good standing for future IO’s. In addition to full delivery, reaching or exceeding the advertiser’s expected performance metrics will improve the chances of winning recurring revenue with the advertiser. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions and poor habits in online advertising that lead publishers to ruin their campaigns — sometimes before they even begin. Through many years of experience, the Operative Managed Services team has developed numerous time-tested pre and post-sale campaign management strategies which, if used correctly, can guarantee the successful delivery of all online campaigns.

Many times a campaign is destined to fail even before it begins. There are a few main causes for this situation. One reason is that a website can be improperly tagged and whoever is responsible for determining available inventory simply is not aware of this. Many times it is the sales team’s responsibility to determine available inventory and it is very likely that the sales team has no idea how to validate the tags in a particular section of the site. For example, it’s possible that the section listed in a RFP is Entertainment, but in actuality the Entertainment section on the site includes tags for the homepage. In this case availability may be extremely understated and the campaign will not even deliver to the intended sections, which could lead the advertiser to cancel the IO. Another more common pre-sale problem is overselling the site. Overselling often is the result of numerous sales people selling the same product at the same time. If there is no real-time central record of what has been booked, it is very likely that two different sales people could book a large campaign for the same product for the same run dates. Many times this isn’t recognized until it is too late and when it’s impossible to recover from the mistake. In order to prevent overselling Operative has developed an Advertising Revenue Management (ARM) software solution called Dashboard, which acts as a real-time central record of total and booked inventory enabling all sales people to have accurate inventory avails along with other invaluable information about their campaigns at their fingertips.

Once a website has been overbooked it is the job of the campaign manager to try and resolve the predicament. Campaign managers often believe that adjusting the priorities of the campaigns will resolve the issue, but making these adjustments can begin an endless cycle of priority modifications which ultimately do not solve anything. To explain further, imagine an overbooked website with one campaign that has a higher CPM than the rest. A campaign manager will typically set this campaign to ‘priority one.’ After this increase in priority is made the priority one campaign may begin to perform well and ultimately deliver in full, but the other lower CPM campaigns will continue to under deliver simply because there is not enough inventory. Many times the campaign manager will begin to increase the priority of the lower CPM campaigns thinking they will experience the same improvement, but this is the beginning of the cycle which could eventually result in all campaigns being prioritized at the same level. Making these so-called “optimizations” can effectively undermine the usefulness of the ad server’s pacing algorithm and result in multiple under delivered campaigns.

A successful campaign begins with accurate inventory availability forecasting. In order to accurately assess inventory it is essential that the website is tagged properly and that there is a real-time central record of total and booked inventory. If inventory is assessed properly then overbooking should be avoided; however, this is often not the case and the following post sale campaign management solutions should be considered if the advertiser will permit the change.

• If there is inventory available for another ad size, then reallocate impressions to this ad size
• If the campaign is targeted to a specific portion of the site, then open the targeting to additional similar content or even ROS
• If the campaign is geo-targeted, then open the campaign to more geographical regions
• Extend the end date of the campaign
• Increase traffic using house ads, which redirect to the targeted areas of the site
• Increase marketing spend to drive more traffic to the site

Prioritization should typically be avoided if you are not an expert in deciphering the complicated algorithms used by various ad servers (virtually all of them are proprietary and shrouded in a veil of ambiguity and secrecy), but can be used if done correctly. This approach should only be used if there is one ad under-delivering for a particular ad size per target. Again this approach will not work if a section of the site has been oversold. Instead try using the suggested solutions above and let the ad server do its job, which is to pace the campaigns according to On-Schedule Indicator’s (OSI) and end dates. Another option, which should only be used if necessary, is to change the ad types to “Sponsorship” or set the ads to deliver “As Fast As Possible” (DFP). These solutions must be monitored very carefully because they could easily cause over delivery and eat away at precious inventory that could be allocated to other campaigns.

Likewise, there are other campaign performance techniques that can be executed during the life of a campaign. The following methods can be used to improve click through rates (CTR’s) as well as other performance metrics.

• Generate reports to determine the best performing sections of the site and direct more traffic to these sections of the site. Tools like DART Adapt and others can be a good technological aid.
• Target banner positions above the fold, which are seen by the user more frequently than the banners below the fold. This can reduce wasted impressions and improve CTR’s.
• Implement frequency caps – large numbers of the same ad displayed to the same user do not necessarily correlate to higher CTR’s. Reducing overall impressions potentially results in lower cost and higher CTR (Clicks/Impressions).

If used properly together, these pre and post sale campaign management techniques can greatly reduce the likelihood that campaigns will under deliver. It almost goes without saying that successful delivery of all campaigns is critical to gaining and keeping the goodwill of advertisers. Techniques that depend upon endless cycles of reprioritization are rarely effective. On the contrary, they are usually counterproductive, resulting in digging the grave of poor performance across the entire site even deeper.

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Blogged by Matthew Collins

Matthew Collins is an Operations Manager in Operative’s Managed Services group. Matthew manages one of our crack teams of enthusiastic online pros responsible for providing trafficking, campaign management and best practice recommendations to a wide variety of publisher clients.

Just like the mythological Pandora created by Zeus who unleashed untold “ills, toils and sickness” on mankind, many in the Ad Ops world are wondering if video advertising isn’t the modern-day equivalent. The story goes that the only thing remaining in the jar (Editor: yes, the ‘box’ was actually a ‘jar’) was Hope. Likewise, video advertising offers the potential for great pitfalls and great promise.

Toils

Make no mistake; it’s a tricky realm to navigate. Setting up video ad serving involves a lot of the same steps that a typical ad server implementation does, but it also adds extra layers of complexity that require knowing what a video player can handle. There are a plethora of options out there to consider when deciding who has the best product for your specific needs. DoubleClick’s rich media product and Brightcove’s video platform are some of the more popular ones we’ve seen our publisher clients use quite successfully. However, cost becomes a concern when you’re looking to get more bang for your CPM bucks.

Hope

Fortunately, publishers are not limited to outsourcing their video operations to third-party providers. Because Adobe Flash® has become the de facto standard for building video players (offering ease of use and flexibility), many are able to develop video solutions in-house that effectively satisfy their video advertising requirements. It all just comes down to the expertise of the developers and their knowledge of what needs to be handled in their players. Here are some important factors to consider:

1) Know what Flash can do for you – Flash is not limited to just serving video. You want to get a 300×250 companion ad working in your player? Flash can do it. Overlays popping up in the middle of video content? Flash can do it. A moving shot of you jumping off rooftops in the middle of the night in a black cape? Err… umm.

2) Know what method you wish to employ in video ads – JavaScript is the most common method due to its use of what’s called “Flash variables” that an ad server uses to pass values for a variety of video player assets. The player can then grab those values and render them for each ad call made. But a programming language called XML is rapidly gaining ground. XML, in a way, allows you to pre-define your own code templates for serving any different combinations of assets.

3) Know how much you want to track – It’s becoming standard to include three-point tracking into players. This allows a publisher and/or advertiser to track the beginning, middle, and end of when a video ad plays. Some have gone even further and track in quartiles. Information like this is valuable to a client who wants to know how much interaction a user is having with their ads.

4) Know your ad server – This stays true whether it’s in banner or video advertising. Clearly defining the ad server architecture that will allow for as much flexible targeting as possible is critical to a successful video integration.

Let’s be clear here – this in no way should discourage you from deploying a third-party video advertising solution; many of them are well proven and have a lot to offer in helping ensure a more captivating advertising experience. The number of options is continuously growing and demonstrates that we’ve come a long way since the original opening of Pandora’s video advertising box. Knowing your requirements and getting the right video expertise will guarantee more “promise” than “pitfalls” when building the best video solution.

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Blogged by Tim Robinson

Operative provides world-class video integration support through its Managed Services Ad Server Support team.  Tim Robinson manages this wildly band of ad serving gurus … they really do eat Javascript for breakfast.

Margins is a buzz word. It is a quest. It is an altar at which many in the industry find themselves worshiping.

In this economic environment, the million dollar question is: can the margins be driven without impact on client satisfaction?  One way to approach driving margins is to knock on the client’s door and ask them for more money. The other approach is to focus on your operational efficiency and control the cost of quality, thereby driving up margins.

In this post we will talk about a few areas that need more focus in the Ad Ops world.

The 50-50-90 rule

Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

How often does it happen that Sales sells a product that’s overbooked? Or your operations team traffics key words that don’t exist?

Standardization is the key. It makes the process repeatable and prevents mistakes from recurring. Creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Trafficking Guidelines, Process Documents, Workflow diagrams, etc. help initiate and encourage standardization. Updating these documents frequently and training your resources to effectively use them are equally as important as creating the documents.

Honk if you love peace and quiet

Case in point:  in many shops, the situation often occurs that a web developer makes some technical change on the site that Sales or Operations folks have no clue about. Communication is name of the game. Define a clear process and path of communication that will ensure accountability in your organization. This will keep everyone up-to-speed on all developments and changes.

In many cases web masters/developers do not know the importance of proper site tagging – this results in incorrect inventory projections, delivery of campaigns and problems for troubleshooting.  In this scenario, if there is a defined communication and approval process between the relevant stakeholders (i.e., Sales and Operations) it is likely to reduce potential business conflicts up to 40%.

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning

Late creative, third party discrepancy, inventory management, campaign pacing, etc. are common issues for all publishers. Proactive planning and risk management are key. “We are in a rush and don’t have time to do all of this work!!” is a typical scenario. The approach should be to implement processes that force you to follow certain risk management and planning steps upfront. A simple example of this would be a process that requires an inventory check before selling a product.

In God we trust; all others must bring data!

It’s a dead horse that gets beaten all the time. Collect data around your operations, determine how you measure performance and use it as a feedback loop to improve your processes. Data collection is often difficult — either it’s insufficient or there’s just too much of it and no one is sure about how much of it to trust. Make data “simple” and “connectable” – it is key to ensuring you can effectively use it to make sound business decisions.

Final words:

Some companies have successfully deployed structured workflow management by implementing a unified technology platform (such as Operative Dashboard) to achieve efficiency throughout their operations. Partnering with an expert who can provide a bird’s eye view may bring new perspectives and clarity around ways in which to streamline processes and increase these efficiencies.

Being successful in today’s complex, competitive environment means effectively balancing customer experience with operational efficiency.  We’ll look forward to taking further deep dives into this subject in future posts in response to your comments.

Everyone  has seen those little online popup windows that show a surveillance camera or a TV monitor with some sexy women on it.  Let’s be honest – it tempts us to check out the name, address and  …….. while some us find it annoying as hell.

Back in the days…well to be specific in April 2009, the Online Publishers Association announced that a broad set of its members would be adopting new larger ad units. Even though it is OPA’s intent to increase innovation and efficacy in the online space, is this particular move one that could easily backfire in the long term?

Let’s take a look at some points put forward by experts in the industry and classify them as ‘Pros’ or ‘Cons’.  You be the judge on whether these non-standard ad units should be used or not.

The top 5 YEAH…

• On a limited basis non-standard banners and pop-ups resulted in a lift in CTR, engagement, and possibly even conversions or transactions.
• They also create new revenue stream for publishers, while creating extremely high impact placements for advertisers.
• Create scarcity – Limiting the number of these “non-standard” units you sell in a month will help mitigate user burnout or creative fatigue.
• Pop-ups can help establish a brand while offering transactional services and opt-in or contact opportunities.
• The interstitial ad creative uses “dead time” to show an ad message, at a time when the site visitor is on hold and attentive to the message that appears.

The top 5 NAH !..

• These ads might be testing well initially, but at some point the novelty will wear off for users, and the innovation that seemed to flow so freely at the beginning may reduce to nothing.
• These new-size banners aren’t cheap and the same goes for pop-ups.
• There is a relatively small but vocal minority of users who have a low tolerance for pop-ups.
• Pop-ups tend to physically blot out the content that the consumer is actually seeking.
• Another drawback to consider for interstitials is that these ads can attract a lot of attention, but do not always generate a large number of clicks.

What do others think?

A Doubleclick study found that banner ads increased brand measures 56%, large rectangles 86% and interstitial ads increased brand measures 194%.

The IAB’s own study, conducted by Dynamic Logic, found that the new larger ad units are 25% more effective in lifting key brand metrics such as brand awareness and message association. The research also shows that additional exposures significantly increase persuasion metrics such as purchase intent. The research was based on 8750 respondents, four advertisers and 12 creative units.

As for ad shape, so-called skyscraper ads — long, skinny upright banners, proved most effective. Ad placement made a difference as well, with ads displayed during a transition from one Web page to the next outperforming those placed within or on top of a page.

Final thoughts …

“When used with enriched ad technology, the new units are two to three times more effective in increasing message association than standard banners.” said Jed Savage, Director of National Sales for MSN at Microsoft Corp.

Media buyers claim that pop-ups deliver a click-through rate of anywhere from 2.5 percent to 19 percent.  That’s many times the click-through rate of the banner ad, which hovers around a negligible 0.3 percent.

Three suggestions for sidestepping the annoyance factor:

1. Target pop-ups as carefully as possible, because pop-ups don’t work for every type of web surfer.
2. Avoid repeated pop-ups in the same visit.
3. Be sure the pop-up is either very informative or very entertaining, since either of these attributes will help the ad seem less annoying.

As a whole, you need to be conscious of your brands integrity. Just because an advertiser has budget doesn’t mean they should be allowed to spend it. Make sure they are relevant to the users and the content. Any online media campaign should have a healthy mix, a variety of different sizes and types of messages.

When you consider their importance, it seems surprising that ad tags aren’t shown more love by publishers.  They should be. If a site is properly tagged, it can generate far more revenue than it otherwise would.   Simply put, every subpar ad tag causes a publisher to lose potential revenue.  Here’s why:

Communication between a website and an ad server

Ads that command the highest CPM are those that are best targeted to an audience.  I’m sure Nike, Vonage or any other advertiser will pay more for a campaign that delivers results in the form of clicks and actions and then conversion. The best way for a publisher to ensure that its audience is attracted to the ads being displayed is to use the site content to gauge the interest of each visitor. For sites that require user registration, additional information, such as age and gender, may also be available.

All of this valuable information is useless, however, if it doesn’t make it into the ad server.  Building an advanced ad tag that passes along all relevant information allows the ad server to present the most appropriate ad to the user. Considering that the ad tag is the main source of communication between a website and an ad server, it makes sense that a suitable ad tag is needed in order for the server to perform most effectively.

My content is the best

We all know that not all content is created equal.  What is truly helpful is to be able to identify which content performs best. Knowing the patterns of visitors on a website allows sales teams to best match campaigns to content. For example, ads that appear on pages featuring content that engrosses visitors, such as news articles and movie clips, may not receive as many clicks as those on pages whose content is of a more general nature. The performance of low-click content makes it unsuitable for CPC campaigns.  When the content type is included in the site tag (ex: sect=news or sect=video), the publisher can then decide to exclude these sections from CPC campaigns and utilize them for branding campaigns, which do not require high click rates.  Rather than let the low click-through rate of those sections drag down the average performance of the site, the publisher is able to separate them out and sell the high-click content at a premium.  In this way, the publisher is able to best match content to advertisers and maximize revenue.

Trying to sell – Bump up the appeal

When a website is outfitted with site tags that take into account useful information – such as user details, page position, and site content – the sales team is able to sell more targeted campaigns at higher rates.  Being able to differentiate content allows for more flexibility when selling inventory.

Reports, Reports and more Reports!

Even after an ad serves, an ad tag’s job is not done.  Detailed ad tags are able to enhance reporting capabilities and make delivery reports more robust.  The information contained in the reports is useful to both advertisers and publishers.

Advertisers love detailed reports because they provide the advertiser with the ability to more effectively optimize a campaign.  Many long term campaigns rely on optimization to attain the results that an advertiser is seeking.  Publishers that offer detailed reporting are attractive to advertisers because they are more in control of how their money is being spent.

Consider this scenario:  A publisher  MYSAMPLETAG.COM (fake name) with advanced ad tags is able to target certain ads to a website that features several sections, each with different user demographics.  When the advertiser (lets say  TOYSRUS) examines the detailed delivery report, they notice that creative featuring a puppy performed particularly well on a section of children’s content whose visitors are between the ages of 6 and 11. Armed with this information, the TOYSRUS chooses to run the puppy creative at a higher rotation in that section, increasing the click rate of the campaign. The robust reporting that sophisticated ad tags can offer allows for greater campaign optimization and can enhance the performance of the website.

Let me tell you …

A very good example of the company  that certainly knows the value of an ad tag is NBC Universal’s Local Integrated Media.  Their websites span many different domains and markets and they cater to the tastes of many different audiences. Through their systematic and organized site tags, they are able to provide detailed information which enables them to make the most of the content that they produce.   Their careful attention to their ad tags has helped them make their complex network manageable.

Net-Net

Properly tagging a website is an investment that is well worth making. The returns to be gained from targeted selling and advanced reporting are significant for publishers and should not be overlooked. Targeted selling allows publishers to properly match advertisers to content, ensuring high performance that is valuable to advertisers.  Additionally, advanced reporting allows for improved campaign optimization and boosts performance even more. Every site that is not adequately tagged is not living up to its full potential.

**If you are interested in retagging your web site, or would like to learn more about working with an Operative re-tagging strategy consultant, please contact Greg Carr at 212.206.4762 or gcarr@operative.com.