Operative Blog

“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!

As part of what will be our ongoing series on The Anatomy of an Ad Tag, this post will offer a brief discussion of the key ‘pros and cons’ of two different ad tag types. Iframe or JavaScript ad tags?  You decide…

When tagging up a website with ad tags there are two main types which can deliver rich content, they are Iframe or JavaScript ad tags, but which one should you choose? In this post, we’ll take a minute to talk about the differences between the two, let’s kick off with Iframe tags.

Iframe Tags

An Iframe is simply a tag that defines an inline frame that contains another document. It is supported by all major browsers. With Iframes you can define the width and height of the document loaded into the frame and choose to have a border and define the border color. Iframes can serve most rich content but will have to have an Iframe buster file implemented to serve expandable creatives from a third party rich media vendor.

Iframe pros:

• Although Iframe tags are in the page html, their content is loaded separately to the page so page load times may be slightly quicker than pages using JavaScript Tags.

Iframe cons:

• There can be larger counting discrepancies with Iframe tags.
• To serve expanding creatives, an Iframe buster file will need to be implemented by the publisher for each rich media vendor used. This is due to the nature of an Iframe being a fixed width and height.

JavaScript Tags

A JavaScript tag is the best tag for serving rich content because of its flexibility. JavaScript is also supported by all major browsers. JavaScript ad tags pull external content using the src variable.

JavaScript pros:

• Can serve all rich media content.
• Counting discrepancies can be less than Iframe tags.

JavaScript cons:

• Can affect page load times as the browser will wait for the JavaScript content to load before continuing to render the page.
• The tag will not show if the user has JavaScript disabled in their browser.

In conclusion, while both Iframe and JavaScript tags have their merits, it is our recommendation that you use JavaScript ad tags for serving ads because of their flexibility and ability to serve all rich media content now and in the future.  Iframe tags are only typically recommended for complex web pages where JavaScript is proven unsuitable such as refreshing elements in the same page.

What tag is your organization?  Why?  We’d really like to hear your opinions and experience on this subject.  Until next time, happy tagging!

Glad you’re here and welcome to the inaugural post of our soon-to-be infamous Ad Ops Blog!  Over the next weeks and months (and years and millenniums …), we’ll be discussing ‘everything Ad Ops’ – from processes and best practices that will make your Ad Operations hum, to the latest developments in technology that will make your ads sing … and to boot, we’ll have fascinating interviews with our brilliant operations staff whose experience represents more than 100 years in online advertising (I know, I know … that’s before the Internet, or even before TV, but it’s true and always sounds really cool in the “About Us” section on the company web site).  Seriously, over the last 10 years we’ve had the pleasure of working with literally 100’s of small and large publishers and agencies as an integral part of their Ad Ops team … so, we’ve learned a thing or two about what works and, even more intriguing, we’ve learned what’s a total waste of time and effort.

But wait there’s more! In addition to our own existential musings about the Wonderful World of Ad Ops, we hope to feature some of YOU, our devoted readers, and your unique perspectives and opinions.  After all, what good is having a blog anyway if it’s just going to be a one-way conversation?!  So, at worst we promise not to bore you to death, and at best we hope to provide you with timely and relevant information that you can start using right away.

To quote from a not-so-famous Latin verse:  A cane non magno saepe tenetur aper (“A boar is often held by a not-so-large dog.”)  OK, a slight digression … but the point is that every good solution needs a darned good problem to precede it.  And, what better place to root up a bunch of problems that need solving than in Ad Ops.  So to kick this off, we’ve blame-stormed and come up with some Topics, Considerations & Challenges faced by Ad Ops that we’d like to get your help in selecting for future blogs.  If there are subjects here (or not here) that you would like to see covered, please let us know … second drum roll, please:

• Late to the dance … a creative love story [Late creatives]
• And what math are you using? [Unraveling the mysteries of primary and third party ad server discrepancies]
• I want it THIS big! [Impact of nonstandard ad units]
• What’s in an ad tag? [Deciphering the anatomy of an ad tag]
• Why I don’t fix my own car [Should you consider partnering with an Ad Ops expert?]
• Recovering from Analysis Paralysis [How to build efficiencies in Ad Ops that work]
• Kaboom! Oh No!! NOT AGAIN!!!! [Top Five Ad Ops disasters to avoid]
• The kid’s menu isn’t always cheapest [Which ad server will provide you the best value?]
• The replacement TV doesn’t work either [Creative houses need more than just "send me a new creative that   works” to make it work]
• My life is a bit complicated [Why bad ad tagging is just money down the drain]
• Just short of the goal line [Tinkering with optimization]
• It sounded really cool when we pitched it [As creatives get more complicated, so does the development and testing]
• Alice doesn’t work here anymore [Ad Ops asked to do more with less during down economic times]
• A little lumpy around the middle [Managing to the ebbs and flows]
• Who’s the new kid? [Effectively on boarding new operations staff]
• Who took my abacus?! [Maintaining and gaining new technology skills]
• There is no good ‘make good’ [How quality translates to dollars]

In our next series of blogs, we’ll take a closer look at many of these topics and attempt to provide helpful discussion of solutions to these new and old challenges faced by Ad Ops.  We encourage you to share with us your thoughts as well … we’ll do our best to address them right here in future posts.  We encourage you bookmark this page, email it to a friend, colleague or associate (as well as add our RSS feed).

Thanks for stopping by and reading this far … we look forward to many interesting discussions to come.

Is this your product catalog?

As I talk to clients and prospects, one of the most common fallacies I run across is the idea is that inventory costs are fixed and cheap. However, when we dig a little deeper we find that isn’t necessarily the case. Many people I work with in digital media feel there is little risk to adding another layer of targeting or packaging capability to their portfolio. The assumption is that if the targeting isn’t used, it doesn’t cost the publisher anything. In other words, more is more.

How did this approach come to be? In my opinion, the roots are in our DNA so it’s especially hard to resist. We are a medium founded on technological advances – it’s natural to keep adding capabilities. In the 90’s header info (geo-targeting, OS and browser targeting) and registration info (gender, HHI, etc.) were major leaps forward. But now we’ve layered on behavioral targeting, re-targeting, performance targeting, keyword phrases, social media profile info etc. and it shows no signs of stopping. Companies like DoubleClick/Google, BlueKai, MediaSix Degrees, Tacoda/Ad.com Quantcast have helped with this proliferation. In part this comes from a renaissance of entrepreneurial companies seeking to meet or exceed the power of Google’s ad-word target benchmarks as focus returns to performance. As always, marketers seek to avoid wasting budget as much as possible. Often publishers are challenged to say no to new capabilities that seemingly all their competitors are adopting.

Well, if we turn everything on but don’t use it, what’s the harm? In a word, clutter. I liken some sites I know to the homes we see on the show Clean House. Verdict: Foolishness! There are two challenges with having a bloated product catalog:

1)      The operational costs to manage. These hidden costs are everywhere – extra time to get complex avails into the plan, extra time explaining (and re-explaining) what a specific capability is to all parties, product sheets, added trafficking time, potential vendor management time, product catalog analysis, campaign reporting, optimization, invoicing, etc.

2)      Distraction from Core Competency. Advertisers buy your site because you have a great audience. The further you winnow out ‘waste’, the further away you get from what makes your site unique and the more your impressions become commoditized.

So is RON the answer? I hope not. The trick is finding your Innovation Fulcrum.

To do this, you’ll want to create the simplest product catalog, baseline the effort and revenue associated with it throughout the selling process, then add in layers until you find the point where the margin becomes unacceptable. This is called the Model T method. You then have two options.

1)      Stop. Create artificial constraints for the overall health of the company

2)      Change the equation – perhaps with a targeting premium or a change of process, an additional layer or two becomes profitable

All participants in the digital ecosystem should be going through this exercise in this climate. Given their position in the company, Ad Operations has an opportunity to take the lead in assessing the right balance of operational complexity and revenue opportunity. Only sites that have a compelling product offering with an internal efficiency will be able to thrive. Taking steps to assess what the right mix of capabilities are for your business will pay for itself for years to come.