So which ad server do we recommend for your enterprise? The answer, it turns out, entirely depends of your level of experience in ad serving, your “learning curve” appetite, selling strategies and a host of other factors. To learn more, our blog editor Amy Inlow, spoke with Barnaby Edwards, one of our product managers and ad server experts, on how publishers should go about selecting an ad server that’s right for their enterprise.

Amy: Let’s start at the very beginning. What should a publisher think about when selecting an ad server?

Barnaby: The first thing you need to consider is your level of experience. Are you a start-up? Or are you an established publisher who has out-grown your current ad server? Start-ups may do fine with free ad server, such as DFP for Small Business, which offers basic targeting, standard reporting and other features to get the publisher up and running quickly and easily. But it’s just a stepping-stone to a more robust system.

Another consideration: Your future plans. Don’t select an ad server that only supports display ads if your goal is to offer video or mobile ad placement a few years down the road. Migrating all of those tags to the new server will be a complex process, especially with active and planned campaigns to accommodate.

Publishers should also take their selling strategies into account. Do they plan to sell remnant inventory via third-party exchanges? Do they want to sell premium ad bundles? Advanced targeting? Capabilities for all of these things vary from server to server.

And ease-of-use is critical. How much of a learning curve can you handle? Are you okay with a complex implementation? Or do you prefer something that’s more out-of-the-box? The more flexible the system, the better the control you have over your environment. But you’ll need a higher level skill set for running your ad server and making changes.

Amy: Let’s say I’m a publisher who’s just starting out. Which ad servers would you recommend, and why?

Barnaby: DFP for Small Business would be a good choice, especially if you’re a very small publisher who’s just beginning to sell ad space and have just a few premium deals. It’s free, simple, and basic. You can do geotargeting, time of day and placement targeting, run standard reports, and do some campaign optimization. And if you don’t have a direct sales team, its integration with AdSense will be essential to monetize your inventory. Support is a bit of a challenge however, since it’s mostly self-service.

OpenX Enterprise is also a good choice for publishers who are just starting out and want a server that will grow with them for a while. The interface is simple and its workflows are intuitive and Web 2.0 friendly. You can do geo-targeting (by longitude and latitude), retargeting, behavioral targeting, and create and sell audience segments. And it’s integrated with OpenX Market, which is an ad exchange where you can sell remnant inventory.

One of the things I really like about OpenX Enterprise is its Server-Side tagging feature, which essentially lets the publisher create and manage tag with its interface. There’s no need to muck around on the publishers website – or engage development resources – to update tags.

Forecasting is a bit of a drawback with OpenX Enterprise in that you need to build a campaign in order to see the amount of inventory you’ll have available, which is a lot of extra work.

Amy: And let’s go to the opposite extreme – which ad server is best for large publishers?

Barnaby: DFP Premium is the industry standard – and the reason why Google acquired DoubleClick. The ad server is very flexible, offers granular targeting and robust campaign optimization and forecasting capabilities. In fact, it’s designed to handle any requirement a publisher may have.

The forecasting and campaign optimization uses predictive modeling and algorithms that are unique to the publisher, and are really quite advanced. It’s the best bet for publishers who need to deliver great campaign results for their advertisers.

DFP Premium integrates with DoubleClick Ad Exchange, making it easy for publishers to sell their remnant inventory. And it supports Dynamic Optimization, which means prior to delivering an ad, ad server will look at the publisher’s guaranteed campaigns, and test what the impression will garner on the open market and sell it to the buyer with the highest CPM.

DFP Premium’s architecture is open to interpretation, which gives publishers almost unlimited flexibility as to how they categorize their inventory. Publishers go through a process of defining their sites, zones and key-values in order to sell inventory. But, this also means that the learning curve is steep, and that traffickers need a higher level of skill than they would if they were using other ad servers. So publishers really need to think about the level of resources they want to commit to their DFP ad server.

Another issue is what type of machines their ad ops team will use to access the UI. DFP supports Internet Explorer only.

Amy: What if I’m a large publisher and want something that’s more out-of-the-box?

Barnaby: There are some very good options available to you. ADTECH is a premium ad server that on the whole equals DFP Premium in terms of targeting, reporting and trafficking. ADTECH however, offers a simpler, more intuitive user interface and workflow. Its workflows are horizontal, letting you drill down on any particular asset or targeting feature of a campaign.

One of the things I personally like about ADTECH is the way campaigns are trafficked. ADTECH lets you customize the view, so if your campaign doesn’t use any key values, for instance, you can eliminate that step as your build your campaign. This saves a lot of time.

It’s forecasting is simple, but inconvenient. Like OpenX Enterprise, you first need to build a campaign and insert a line item in order to see how much inventory you have available, which is less than idea for forecasting in response to RFPs.

Amy: What if support is really important to me?

Barnaby: Most of the ad servers have a self-service model along with a general contact center for asking questions. You won’t get immediate answers to your questions. Only OpenX offers dedicated support for all its OpenX Enterprise clients.

Publishers do have other options.  Of course there are other ad servers on the market outside of the one’s described previously.  Publishers can also partner with Operative, and we can traffic, serve and manage campaigns for you.

To hear more of Barnaby’s suggestions for selecting the right ad server for your business, register for our upcoming webinar, which will take place on January 26 at noon ET.  Visit www.operative.com/adserver to register. 

About Barnaby Edwards, Product Manager, Operative

Barnaby Edwards is among our top ad serving experts here at Operative. Serving as Product Manager, he is responsible for all Operative.One integrations with ad servers, working to ensure that our software enables customers to seamlessly manage their orders in one place. He knows the ins and outs of all major ad servers, having previously worked on integrations for Donavan Data Systems. Barnaby is also a lifelong Doctor Who fan who runs a fan group in New York City, writes about the show for various fanzines and books, and volunteers at conventions nationwide.

AI: Let’s start with the basics. What is productization, and why is it important for publishers?

AS: Simply put, productization is deciding exactly what you plan to sell and being consistent about it. Consistency is helpful for your sales teams, your buyers, your inventory managers, your pricing team and your traffickers. If everyone is working with a commonly accepted product catalog with predictable pricing rules then it takes the guesswork out of everyday tasks.

In the end a good productization practice will result in a toolset that the entire organization refers to constantly. It should be a searchable catalog that the sales team uses to build proposals for buyers, the foundation for a comprehensive rate card, an implementation guide for campaign managers and a reference for analytics teams.

The goal is to strike a balance that gives buyers access to the audience they’re looking for on safe, well-defined content, while maintaining a level of structure and control for operations teams to traffic and manage campaigns. But most important, I think, productization lets publishers confidently break out of the constraints imposed on them by their ad servers so they can create products and packages that really reflect buyer demand.

AI: How does productization actually occur?

AS: There are a few fundamental aspects to the process. The first is simply segmenting all of the ad slots a publisher has access to so that they can actually be sold. In practice this means starting with ad server tags to make sure they’re following a consistent structure, and documenting clearly how to target any given site, channel, section, page, etc.

On top of that the publisher should take stock of all demo, geo, behavioral and other targeting that is feasible based on their technology stack, and make decisions about which they’re ready to expose to buyers. Are you unable to DMA target in some areas because your mobile ad server doesn’t support it? Does it really pay to allow age targeting on the home page, or is it better to limit that inventory to exclusive sponsorships? Determine the combinations of targeting that make sense for your business on each of your properties, and document those as well.

With those things in place, ongoing productization means maintaining an internally published list of buyer friendly products with documented controls around pricing, targeting, creative specs, buyer limitations – and then as much META information as possible to help sell the inventory.

AI: What are some of the business issues productization helps publishers address?

AS: A big issue is simply knowing all of the ad slots publishers have available to sell. After all, you can’t sell ad slots that you don’t know about. This may seem easy but it can be challenging when new tags are being generated every day, or if the inventory was acquired through partnerships with other publishers or networks, for example.

Another issue is delivering on customer expectations. Sales teams are often too quick to sell products that are driven by the unique requirements of the buyer. For instance, the buyer may ask for audience segmentation, frequency capping, or special creative that aren’t standard offerings. The operations team is left to figure out how to match what’s been sold with what can be delivered, and turn it around in a few weeks or days. This disconnect causes delays, discrepancies, and unhappy buyers. Productization can help eliminate that disconnect by clearly identifying what is available to a sales team. This doesn’t mean that your organization shouldn’t offer the new and bleeding-edge experience buyers want, but when a request comes in that doesn’t match up to existing products, clear product definitions should provide the time and context the publisher needs to really capitalize on the opportunity.

Inventory management also gets a boost from productization. Not only does the structure and consistency of the catalog make inventory management possible, it’s also a way to prevent campaigns with combinations of targets and ad slots that have no chance of delivering in full. Is it worth it to deal with the booking calculations for users of a certain age in a specific DMA on your travel section? If not, don’t sell it.

AI: How will a publisher benefit from productization?

AS: A huge benefit is the sustainable boost in revenue that comes from implementing enterprise-wide sales guidelines. There may be inventory that performs best when sold to particular industries, or through specific sales teams, or when offered through an exchange. Implementing controls that ensure inventory is sold with the whole yield curve in mind is the only way to raise the effective CPM across the board.

Rate card management tools also help publishers boost revenue because they set standard rates for all products by channel, including price goals and minimum floors. They also let publishers ensure that products are sold using the cost method (CPM, CPC, etc.) that delivers the best results.

Another benefit is improved reporting. Productization is instrumental for any critical revenue analytics. The holistic view lets publishers compare how their inventory performs across sales teams and channels. Since all sales teams, including performance and marketing teams, will be working with comparable products, publishers can actually compare apples to apples.

AI:  How does a publisher go about productizing inventory? What are the first steps?

AS: Any publisher doing direct sales today has been doing productization since their first IO was trafficked. Even if they haven’t been thinking about it as productization, all the placement lists, trafficking instructions, rate cards, creative specs and other materials that sit in Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint and people’s heads are the building blocks of a product catalog. The first step is to focus as an organization on the right strategy for the business and get buy-in from stakeholders to participate. From there it’s a matter of deciding on the technical infrastructure for managing the catalog and going through the process.

To really manage a robust enterprise level catalog requires an Advertising Business Management platform that can really bring everything together. It should provide the tools to generate and manage a product catalog, and ideally it will embed that catalog in the sales, trafficking and reconciliation process with hooks into business intelligence and inventory management.

Operative hosted a webinar on this topic Thursday, November 17.  Our guest speaker and presenter was Joanna Bloor, VP of Sales Operations for Pandora.  To obtain a copy of the webinar recording, please send an email to info@operative.com and we will email you the link once it becomes available.

About Andrew Sullivan

Andrew is the mastermind of Operative’s unique, multi-dimensional inventory management solution, as well as the company’s Ad Master Model and Campaign 360, solutions that enable publishers to better manage and optimize their product offerings and solutions set.  In his role as Product Manager, Andrew manages and oversees development for the software; acts as a liaison between sales, account management and development; and is continually designing solutions to meet ongoing publisher challenges.

Andrew began his career at Operative as a Campaign Manager, trafficking, managing and optimizing campaigns for both publisher and agency clients.  Within a year of joining the company, he was leading the systems integration team, working with some of Operative’s largest clients on software implementations.  Andrew also served as Senior Manager for Strategic Development, where he focused on new product innovation. 

Prior to joining Operative, Andrew worked as an Art Director at Agora Studios.  He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Media, Arts and Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  

The panel was asked to address the following question:  Does the consolidation of the industry’s operating systems mean less complexity and more efficiency – or less choice, less competition, less innovation?

For me, there are three questions at the core of this topic:

1. Is consolidation really happening?
2. Should publishers have to choose between efficiency and innovation?
3. What is an operating system?

Is there Consolidation?

There certainly have been a good number of acquisitions in our industry, but innovation is also happening at a rapid pace.

Just look at the data…

For example, the number of IAB vendor members continues to increase.  Whereas there were 25 members in 2005, the number has climbed to 140 in 2011.  And the 2011 number is still higher than the 2010 number which cited 125 members.  Just last week, Brian Morrissey of Digiday mentioned in his “What if the Music stops in ad tech” article, that there are over 200 vendors listed on the LUMA Partners slide, and that’s just the display slide!  Here at Operative, the number of requests to integrate with our platform is three times what they were just two years ago.  These numbers and the activity in the space indicate to me, that consolidation is not happening.  The reality is that for every company that is bought, two to three are being created, and driving the need for solutions that solve very big problems.

So consolidation is just not happening, nor will it in the next five years, which means publishers cannot and should not rely on it to achieve operational efficiency.  In fact, M&A activity within the ad tech market is just getting warmed up.  While many people refer to the proliferation of solutions as fragmentation, a word with negative connotations, what they are really talking about is specialization.  In an industry that is changing as quickly as ours, a lot of individual innovators are required to help address the change.  We just need a way to manage it all, which brings me to my next question.

Everybody calls this Fragmentation. I call it Specialization.

Do YOU Have to Choose Between Innovation and Effectiveness?

The answer is quite simply NO.   You HAVE to do both.  You can NOT choose.

You must be able to run the car and change the engine at the same time if you want to survive in an industry going through this much disruption.  Our industry is complex but it’s not THAT complex relative to other industries.  The question should be how to balance innovation with operational effectiveness?

This may seem impossible to imagine today, but there was a time thirty years ago, when other industries were experiencing major challenges and pains managing their complex supply chains, demand channels and changing market dynamics.  But they overcame those challenges and pains, and they did it with business management software, or what we call them in this space, operating systems or platforms, that integrate with all suppliers, buyers and innovators.  These systems enabled these industries to effectively balance innovation with operational efficiency.

What is an Operating System?

Why do we even have to definite what an operating system is?  It’s because everyone calls themselves an operating system nowadays, which is creating more chaos and confusion.  We need to get beyond the hype and understand what it truelly means to have an operating system.

So how do we, in this industry, define what an operating system is?  By technical definition, an operating system:

• Is a program that manages other applications
• Is a Hub
• Integrates with other technologies
• Uses a common language

 

For a company, an operating system is a business tool or central hub that brings it all together.  It allows the company to grow and innovate, while being more efficient.  Our industry still operates in production systems and in order to become more efficient, to embrace innovation and effectively compete in this dynamic market space, we must begin operating in Operating Systems.

Imagine if when you bought a car from a dealer, they had to input the order into each and every robot on the manufacturing line.  That’s inefficient – HIGHLY inefficient, but that’s what we do in this industry, day in and day out, with our excel files and outlook databases.  We need to work differently, and simplify, in order to embrace change.

When I think about the state of our industry and I hear the pains and challenges customers are experiencing, I am reminded of the following quote:

“Nearly all men die of their remedies, not of their illnesses.”

- Jean Baptiste Moliére

This quote reminds me that solutions chosen out of expediency, out of desire to solve just the immediate problem, will quite often lead to longer term problems and pains.  It’s a good reminder to all of us in this industry that we need to think more broadly, and long-term, about how we solve or pains and problems.

Criteria for Choosing an Operating System

So how do we go about selecting an operating system and move beyond the hype?  Well for starters, you don’t want it to compete with you.  The system needs to be agnostic.  Can you imagine entering your business data into Windows, and Microsoft turning around and using it to create a competing business?

In selecting an operating system, be sure to ask yourself:

• Does the vendor compete with me?
• Do they want to replace me?
• Do they want to commoditize me?

The operating system must also be enterprise-wide, so that the entire organization is utilizing it.  This will create efficiencies and enable you to manage the entire yield curve.  And lastly, it must have scale so that it can integrate with other applications.

Operating Systems in Media

So if this is the criteria for selecting an operating system, then who are we left with in our industry?   We do not lack people and innovation to drive operational efficiency and innovation, but there is a lack of companies whose business models provide the infrastructure that enable YOUR efficiency and innovation, and prioritize driving YOUR company’s value above driving their own.   I believe we are left with only a handful of players – Operative, Media Ocean, Oracle and SAP among them.  While there are others on the image below, we do question their scale and ability to support you in the way a true operating system should, as defined above.

We believe the future consists of two main operating systems:  one on the buy-side and one on the sell-side.  And this is one reason we were excited about the MediaOcean announcement a few weeks back.

So how do Ad Ops Professionals Lead the Charge? 

The job of today’s Ad Ops professionals should be to take a step back and ask, what is my approach to building an efficient company that continually innovates?   And the answer to this question is how you lead and become the change your organization needs in order to effectively balance innovation and efficiency, or, to have your cake and eat it too.

Andy Beale, Director of Technology for Guardian News & Media, discusses the company’s digital-first strategy, why they selected Operative.One to support that strategy and bring together both their print and digital media businesses, and what they hope to gain from using the platform in terms of product innovation and operational efficiencies.   Guardian is the FIRST publisher to bring together both their offline and online businesses onto one single platform, and one of the first to launch an aggressive digital-first strategy.

AI: Are publishers asking their CRM systems to do too much? Why?

GP: Yes. Over a 4 or 5-year period we’ve seen publishers attempt to extend their CRM system to handle their order management functions. But it’s way more than their CRM systems can handle. The digital advertising system is unique, and CRM systems are – by design – generic, since they need to support as many industries as possible.

There are many reasons why publishers have gone down this path. Most publishers with roots in traditional media already had a CRM system in place. Since digital ad sales initially only represented a small fraction of the company’s total revenue a dedicated digital order management system just didn’t seem necessary or justifiable. In addition, emerging Internet publishers often implement a CRM solution first because that is where the growing pains are first felt, plus the CRM vendors have done a good job of pitching a low barrier to entry and ultimate flexibility and customization.

AI: What are publishers discovering once they go down this path?

GP: A bunch of pain points, actually, starting with a lot of data-entry redundancy and manual errors.  Here’s why: at the very highest level, publishers have product, sales, trafficking and billing processes, which means a lot data entry is necessary to move a campaign from one process to another. A typical, multi-channel order can require as many as 10-20 data-entry redundancies moving a campaign through the CRM, ad servers, affiliate partner systems, financial systems and so on. You can see how there is a lot of room for error.

CRM companies have successfully created the perception their systems can accommodate any business requirements you have. But that’s a slippery slope. CRM systems don’t have the fields that are standard in our industry – CPM, CPC, CPD rates, targeting premiums, number of impressions – really basic stuff.  All of that requires custom configuration.

And there’s a host of other issues that will need custom-developed fixes.  Sales can’t respond to RFPs quickly if they don’t have real-time access to available inventory, so the publisher needs a custom integration with its inventory management process. And ad servers are completely different systems, which means ad ops personnel end up entering campaigns manually. And CRM systems haven’t been designed to handle the forecasting requirements that are so vital in our world.

So what publishers are finding, in a nutshell, is that the CRM-extension path necessarily entails a lot of time focusing on software development and managing its lifecycle to make-up for the CRM shortcomings.

AI: But that’s not to say CRM systems aren’t vital to publishers …

GP: Absolutely! CRM systems were designed to help companies manage the interactions with customers and prospects, and they do a very good job at those kinds of tasks. They make it easier for media companies to manage marketing and lead-generation programs, track account activity, view the revenue pipeline, and support ticket management. I see a lot of cases where publishers are spending so much time trying to get their CRM systems to do things it wasn’t meant to do, like order management, which they neglect to fully utilize the core competencies.

AI: So what do you recommend for publishers that are ramping up to enterprise-level digital ad sales?

GP: Publishers need to remember that CRM specializes in relationship management. In order to scale publishers will need to implement a more comprehensive solution that can bring their whole digital advertising value chain together. Advertising Business Management (ABM) platforms are a great solution for integrating all of their silos. These platforms provide the underlying business layer that brings together all of the people, processes and technologies required to package, sell, traffic, manage, optimize and bill ads.

AI: And the CRM plugs into that …

GP: That’s right, the CRM system plugs into the ABM platform. What’s more, all of the people throughout the organization who need access to the data that’s stored in the CRM can access it through the ABM. So for instance, finance can get deal terms to generate invoices.  In that way, the ABM actually enhances the benefits of the CRM system by making its data more available.

AI: What are some of the operational efficiencies that result from ABMs?

GP: Publishers can streamline their catalog management and media-plan building processes. In order to sell, sales teams need a catalog of sellable products, and they need a process to sell those products quickly. But with a CRM system filling in for order management, there’s a huge amount of manual effort involved. ABM systems, on the other hand, are specifically designed to handle digital media products, so a lot of that manual intervention can be eliminated right off the bat. Sales won’t need to wade through spreadsheets attempting to find ad products that match their customers’ requirements. The ABM system also integrates with the front-end systems that agencies use, which makes it easier for sales to respond to RFPs with well-built media plans.

Ad Ops execution is another area where publishers will see huge gains in efficiency. CRM systems don’t integrate with ad servers, and that introduces a wrench for ad op teams. Without an integration a spider web of manual processes evolve between the CRM and ad servers, resulting in duplicate data entry, trafficking errors, delays in campaign launch and more. But an ABM platform provides the proper infrastructure to integrate CRM with ad servers, which means all that critical data can flow smoothly and automatically.

Another system critical to the publisher: Billing. CRM systems weren’t designed for the unique ways that campaigns are sold and launched. Nor can they connect to the financial systems that the billing department uses to generate invoices. So again, a lot of manual intervention is required, which means potential errors, and slower cash flows. An ABM platform, on the other hand, spans and compiles all of the information finance needs to generate invoices.

AI: To sum up, what are some of the benefits publishers can expect to realize by integrating their CRM system with an ABM platform?

GP: In addition to the significant operational efficiencies we just mentioned, they will benefit from reduced data entry and errors, better business transparency, and lower operating costs.

Note: Operative is hosting an EXCLUSIVE webinar on this topic Thursday, October 20th at 10:00 a.m. EST, featuring guest speaker Michael Goefron, Senior Director of Ad Operations for Alloy Digital.  To register for this event, please visit www.operative.com/crmmeetabm.

  About Geoff Petkus, Senior Director of Product Management, Operative

Dealing With The Devil

As an industry, we have made a deal with the devil. Indirect sales channels burst onto the scene promising more revenue with less effort. Easy money, however, comes at a high price.  Traditional technology infrastructure claims only 2-5% of revenue, while these so-called revenue-boosting partners unabashedly take a hefty 30-70% ransom after all is said and done.

Buyers and sellers depend on these players to run their advertising business. But business infrastructure has been usurped by a myriad of brokers, each taking a cut along the way. First came the ad networks. Then came audience extension platforms and ad exchanges. Re-branded efforts produced yield optimizers and then RTBs.  As everyone knows, if you take a look at the business model, they’re still all networks who are paid at exorbitant rates.

Everyone argues about whether it’s the buyer or seller who holds the position of power, when in reality, these intermediaries hold both of them hostage. Not only are their margins at stake, but their ability to compete against traditional mediums are hindered. Where is the capital to invest in better content? Where is the capital to invest in better creative? It certainly feels like it’s going to the VCs, rather than to advertisers and publishers.

How is this sustainable? Buyers and sellers have known for years that they have been losing a disproportionate amount of revenue to indirect and remained concerned that their partners are commoditizing their data, audience, and inventory. In the end, they ask, “Are my partners intent on competing with me?”

Even the titans in our industry are banding together to fight against the middlemen—just look at the recent AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft announcement.

Change Is In the Air

Both buyers and sellers are fed up. The leakage from the spread between the buyer and seller has become large enough. It has come to the point where they are realizing they are mortgaging their future by not partnering with people that allow them to build value on their own. As Michael Donovan noted to partners yesterday, the deal is addressing their clients’ outcry for “a single, neutral and universal operating system for advertising technology”. Over the past several years, we’ve seen no different on the sell side—publishers are demanding an operating system that enables them to work more easily and directly with buyers while increasing their margins. It is high time that buyers and sellers repatriate their assets and capture revenue for the value they deliver. The key to doing so is to work with partners whose business model is to provide infrastructure, not to compete.

Now, we are one step closer to enabling our clients to succeed. The Donovan and MediaBank merger paves the runway to building tighter buyer-seller relationships by providing this much needed infrastructure on the buy side.

There is no doubt  MediaOcean still has challenges ahead—two different companies, two different cultures, a huge technology challenge to integrate multiple platforms. My hope is that this team knocks it out of the park. This is by far the healthiest thing in a long time that has happened in our ecosystem.

Hi all, I am Dean Jenkins, the new General Manager for Operative’s Asia-Pacific operations. I wanted to formerly introduce myself to the Operative blogosphere and tell you a little about my background and the opportunities we have within the region.

I recently joined Operative to drive and lead business development and customer support initiatives within Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. My appointment marks initial steps in Operative’s global expansion plans, as the company aims to simplify the way in which media companies around the globe operate. My responsibilities include expanding and further developing Operative’s Australia business, with a particular focus on growing existing accounts, as well as developing new business opportunities.

I bring to Operative more than 15 years of experience in the digital media industry, from Deloitte, Seek Limited, and most recently as General Manager for Sensis Media Network, a leading digital Publisher based in Melbourne, Australia. While at Sensis Media Network, I was responsible for the advertising platform, product development and growth of the network to more than 130 online and mobile sites, as well as delivery of behavioral and demographic targeting capabilities for over 14 million users across video, online and mobile inventory.

Through the acquisition of Solbright in October 2010, Operative now estimates it manages nearly 60% of Australia’s display advertising spend. With the market predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 10% over the next 4-5 years (according to Frost & Sullivan), expanding in the region makes a lot of sense from both a growth, as well as a client support standpoint.

Initially, we will focus our efforts in Australia and Singapore, while we keep our eye on ever-expanding markets throughout the rest of the Asia-Pacific region. Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing markets in the world for Internet usage. As usage increases and connectivity improves, we expect to see an increased demand for online advertising solutions. Having and developing further a local presence in the region will ensure we are able to support market growth as it unfolds.

Since starting at Operative, I’ve enjoyed meeting and working with our local clients, including Cricket Australia and REA Media, both of whom were generous enough to participate in today’s press announcement. Clients are expressing a desire and need to simplify their advertising operations in this market, just as they are in the US and Europe. Complexities exist throughout the digital advertising ecosystem on a global basis – and now Operative can help media companies solve them – on a global basis.

I am heading to AdMonster’s Singapore tomorrow, to meet with both new and existing clients alike. If you are planning to be there, please drop me a line at djenkins@operative.com and we can schedule a time to connect.

Cheers! Dean

The online media buying and selling process has changed – direct relationships with agencies and buyers has been reduced by the proliferation of ad networks, ad exchanges, social media platforms and RTB players that have cropped up en mass over the past twelve years, aiming to compete with a publisher’s direct sales channel.  Forrester research estimates that 30% of ad spending will be done via DSPs and RTBs in 2011, while Google estimates that more than 50% of online advertising will be done via these platforms over the next few years.

What does this mean for CROs at online publishing companies?  It means your compensation plan could be at risk.  If you are a CRO or senior digital media sales executive today, you are no longer competing head to head with other publishers to win the big RFPs.  Rather, you are competing with something much faster, and with a different skillset than your human sales team – you are competing with MACHINES.

Many of you have already embraced, or will embrace, this machine-based buying process.  You will compete with yourselves for inventory, most of the time by accident, because you lack visibility into the true value of your impressions.  In addition, many of you will compete or are already competing with machines today.  DSPs, exchanges and RTB players have the power to buy the same or very similar audiences, to the ones you represent today.  Your high reach, high frequency inventory, which used to be the reason you were so successful is now under fire by the machines and, because of this, the direct sales model of today and tomorrow is at risk.

Your revenue is at risk.

The way you and your sales people get compensated for deals will breakdown, if it has not already.

So how do you compete with something that’s faster than you, smarter than you, and doesn’t need sleep in order to be effective?

To hear what some of the leading online publishers think, come hear our presentation at the iMedia Agency Summit in Bonita Springs, Florida on Monday, May 23^rd.

Operative is hosting the Publisher’s Breakfast and will lead an enlightening, engaging conversation about the shift in online media buying and selling, and how these shifts are impacting, or will impact, your company’s revenue and compensation plans.

To help support the discussion, we brought together four of the “founding fathers” of online media – four gentlemen who are arguably the most recognized, well-respected thought leaders  in the field of digital ad sales. We invited them to participate in a pre-event Q&A and were pleased to even get on camera.  Our esteemed cast of characters includes:

• Nick Johnson from NBC Universal
• Kevin Arrix from MTV Networks
• Mark Westlake from Techmedia Network
• Brian Quinn from Triad Digital Media

During the session, you will hear this group talk about three things that publishers need to improve in order to grow their direct sales teams and drive more revenue through the channel.

These include:

1)    Plumbing – Compared to the machines, the current pipes that run water through publisher infrastructure are old and rotting – systems are fragmented and decision-making is hindered.  Imagine an Old Victorian water system, where every time there’s a leak, an entire street needs to be dug up in order to identify and locate the issue.

2)    Inventory – Inventory continues to become more complex to manage and understand, and often comes from multiple data sources. It’s rare that a seller knows exactly how much inventory is available for a segment, target or piece of inventory at the time of proposal.  That’s unacceptable.

3)    Product Packaging – It’s hard to create meaningful packages to takes to customers and impact your average price given issues 1 and 2.

We hope to see you next week at the iMedia Agency Summit…!

iMedia Agency Summit Publisher’s Breakfast Details:

-       Date: Monday, May 23d

-       Time: 8:00 – 9:00 a.m. EST

-       Location: Hyatt Regency Coconut Resort & Spa, Bonita Springs, Fl.

-       Room: Blue Heron Room

 Who owns the data?  How do we leverage it to offer better, more targeted products to advertisers?  How will it further transform our industry and the way consumers interact with brands?  And more…

In my personal conversations with several executives, a consistent theme emerged – that it’s difficult to run a business profitably in this fragmented, data-driven environment and nearly impossible to master inventory.  Many told me that they are losing sleep knowing that their business may not be optimized for maximum success. 

On the supply side of the equation, there is a ton of innovation that needs to be embraced, coming from companies such as Blue Kai, AppNexus, OpenX, Doubleclick and Freewheel.  These are best-in-breed players and, in some cases, tickets to the game.   On the other side of the equation are new demand-side solutions, creating a whole new dynamic and data situation. 

 As mentioned in my introduction to ‘The Greate Debate’ last Tuesday, if it were easier to integrate with the ecosystem that surrounds us, perhaps we could all sleep more soundly.  Let’s face it — we need to all just get along. 

 Media companies are at a crossroad, they either innovate or, dare I say, stop growing (and yes, it is that extreme).  Major Banks are creating new ‘media & technology’ groups to capitalize on the anticipated M&A activity that is about to take off.  Remaining a media leader means finding a way to capitalize on the new opportunities presented by all of this digital innovation. Otherwise, former leaders will likely end up a case study in some future business school course.

It’s not just the demand for data that has brought us to this crossroad, nor is it pitting the people against data.   It has much to do with our long-standing systems and processes for doing business – how we operate and function on a daily basis. This, too, must evolve. 

It’s true, for the last 15 years, the industry has seen massive amounts of digital innovation leading to severe fragmentation, but if we look inside the walls of our own businesses, we’ll find fragmentation exists there as well – within and amongst our critical advertising teams as they continue to work in silos – unable to communicate effectively or efficiently.  We have created a classic supply chain management issue for ourselves that is now holding us back from capitalizing on all the innovation around us. 

If media companies were able to get their operational house in order – the walls “inside” our own businesses – they could more effectively harness and channel the innovation occurring within the exterior spaces around us.  Publishers would have the time and resources to aggregate their data, separate it from its native production system, and place it in the hands of the business in the form of new inventory and product.  They would have more balance and new sources of revenue with which to compete, as opposed to sitting on the sidelines continuing to play defensive blocking and tackling. 

So how do we better manage our businesses – the walls within – in order to harness the power of innovation and help us sleep better at night?  The answer or solution is simple:  an end-to-end advertising business management platform that brings together both supply-side and demand-side systems, processes and people.  With greater cross-organization transparency into the operations, your business will be free to explore the realms and possibilities available through and from innovation.  Enabling our own internal processes and people to “get along” will enable us to then “get along” with the greater digital advertising ecosystem. 

Can’t we all just get along?