Operative Blog

Did you miss DPAC on June 24 at the Millennium Hotel? Are you interested in some of the results of the Operative and DM2PRO State of the Industry survey? Do you want a sneak peak into Operative.One?

No problem.

Download the Operative presentation by clicking on the below link. 

Operative at DPAC Conference_6-24-10

Also, for access to our white paper, State of the Industry: Digital Operations, CLICK HERE. Read more…

Operative Survey: The State of the Industry- Digital Operations

For the last 2 weeks, we’ve been working with the team at DM2PRO to survey the digital advertising community about the current state of affairs:

- Growing need for data integration among all players in the ecosystem

- Blurring lines between publisher, agency, brand and network roles and responsibilities

- As we continue to innovate, our inability to adopt those innovations is holding us back!

- Fragmentation is NOT going away….and agencies, publishers, brands, advertisers and networks alike need to stop losing money and bring our systems together to compete effectively. Read more…

Operative partnered with the team from DM2PRO to survey digital publishers and agencies about the people, processes and tools required to run a profitable advertising business.  At DPAC today, we’ve released the findings.  Take a look at some of analysis we’ve gathered.

More than 339 self-identified publishers weighed in during a one-week period, ample enough indication that we’d struck a nerve with our subject matter. While many of them without doubt juggle “cross-media” campaigns with their traditional content channels and the Web, we went a step farther, asking, “What percent of all your current campaigns includes three or more media (e.g. a mobile, video and display component in a single order)?”

For a slight majority of respondents, such campaigns are still a rarity. But, for the other half, they range from 10%-25% for a little more than a fifth of respondents, to greater than half all campaigns for the top 10% of publishers.

To read more survey results, check out the below PDF.

DPAC_Presentation_Sample survey findings

For more information, please click here.

Moments ago at the DPAC conference in New York, Operative CEO and President, Mike Leo and Operative Founder, Lorne Brown, announced the release of Operative.One- the business platform that allows media company’s to operate in one integrated, best of breed system.

We invite you to learn more about Operative.One!  Please click here.

Operative Announces Operative.One

“It’s with great excitement that we introduce the 2010 OnMedia 100. This fresh batch of the hottest emerging companies in digital advertising joins illustrious alumni and gives us a great deal of insight into the coming trends in monetization… The 2010 OnMedia 100 winners have survived the upheaval of 2009 and are positioned to advance on the opportunities represented by the return to growth in the digital advertising sector. Congratulations—it looks like we made it.” 

Take a look at Operative and the list of OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies of 2010 under the “Advertising Service Providers” category!

Also, please join Operative CEO, Mike Leo at OnMedia NYC on February 2 at 1pm as he moderates the panel, “Will Exchanges Grab Market Share From Networks or Cater To Different Segments?  How Are Distribution and Bidding Evolving?”   Friends from IMO Entertainment, AppNexus, Google, PubMatic, and Peer39 will join in the debate.  We hope to see you there!

Definition: Extrapolate- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extrapolate 

Still in the year 2010, Publishers lose sleep over inventory and how best to manage it to optimize revenue.  As we discuss this vexing conundrum with the publisher audience, the most common themes continue to be:

1. We have SICK excel formulas and tables that help us extrapolate our available/sell-able inventory.

2. We have clients that want us to dive deeper into our audience…in addition, the advertiser wants to geo-target. So, extrapolating the data and conveying the inventory is a PAIN.

3. Using charts and images to extrapolate the inventory data is pretty sweet.  But, again, creating this in excel is sub-optimal.

How do you extrapolate your web site inventory? What solutions have you come up with that other digital publishers could learn from?  Post a note and let us know.

In this afternoon session, Product Manager Andrew Sullivan explores the concept of multi-dimensional inventory for digital publishers.  Decrementing inventory, segmenting audiences, packaging products…..these challenges affect the entire organization and most specifically, the ability to optimize revenue.

What business goals are impacted by your ability/inability to perform multidimensional inventory?

- Selling out of one area of inventory impacts other areas of inventory: this is a tough message to convey to Sales

- Illustrating to sales the full spectrum of inventory they are selling; and reasoning behind why certain pieces of inventory have a higher rate than others

- Ability for sales to communicate the value of their audience to the advertiser/agency

- Packaging strategies…looking at what you can encourage sales to lead with while making good use of the inventory

What systems are you using today to capture and aggregate the inventory?

- Ad server logs

- Excel Sheets

- Rapt

Who interacts with inventory in your organization? What are some of the typical roles?

- Ad Ops Team

- Finance Team

- Analytics Department

- The Exec Team

- The “Ad Product Team”- they focus on product analysis and performance

- Delivery Managers

- Sales reps and Sales planners

- Analytics Teams

What is CRITICAL to your business when solving for MD inventory?

- Compatible with MULTIPLE ad servers

- One data set to have transparency into all the inventory sources

- Quick and easy way to pull the data, aggregate it, and help the product, sales, marketing and ops team make sense of it

- Ability to generate accurate inventory reports

- Flexible rates, packaging

- Not using Excel anymore! It’s too manual and publishers need to move faster!

In breaking for lunch, many clients were anxious to discuss trends and themes that are top of mind as they tackle 2010.  Some of the common themes included:

1. Campaign reconciliation and billing- this is NOT just a Finance responsibility anymore. Many Ad Operations managers are charged with preparing billing and invoicing for revenue recognition- therefore as an industry, we need to do a better job of making billing/invoicing easier for non-Finance-focused individuals.

2. Targeting data- many Publishers are using 5+ targeting tools to help them better segment their inventory to meet advertiser/agency requests. These targeting tools can be cumbersome to manipulate because none of them talk to each other.  How can we simplify data collection from these systems?  How can we then apply the data from the targeting system in a meaningful and easily consumable way for Sales?

Do these topics keep you up at night? Leave us comments on how you have overcome these hurdles and/or best practices you’ve adopted.

Also- want to see who’s here? Or what we’re doing?  Take a look at some pics!  CLICK HERE!

What IS Operative.One?

Operative.One is the NEW brand for our solutions philosophy- the concept that media companies need to utilize multiple pieces of the value system in order to sell, execute and bill digital advertising (CRM, Ad Servers, Finance/Billing, Audience Targeting, Pricing/Rate Card, etc), and that all of these fragmented solutions need to feel as “one”.  It is Operative’s job to make it feel like one…To help our clients become easier to do business with.  Therefore, the “Operative.One” brand will be the umbrella for all future business solutions.

We are at the Winter Client Summit 2010 at the Norwood Club in New York City.  Clients from Wall Street Journal Digital Network, NBCU, Reuters, MySpace, Cars.com, Top 10 Reviews, SmartMoney, Geeknet Inc, and National Public Media to name a few, are here today to provide input into the Operative road map, share experiences about their digital advertising businesses in 2009 and how they plan to grow in 2010. 

Keep following us for updates on themes, discussions, and debates from the Client Summit.

And- check out out tweets @OperativeInc