Operative Blog

Dan Murphy, SVP at Univision Interactive Media and LONG TIME supporter of the IAB, gave an update on the IAB Ad Operations Council.

The joke of the day is that Ad Ops has become a REAL job- where everyone is wearing suits and leaving the jeans and sneakers at home.  According to Dan, both the agency and the publishing sides have value to bring to the table.  6 years ago, the industry was talking about all of the same problems we continue to address today (late creative, intrusive ads, audience measurement, rich media specs and discrepancies).  6 years ago, Ben Reid (when working for About.com) spearheaded the “OARS- Online Ad Reporting Standards” project (ebusiness).  Today, Operative still has a stake in the eBusiness initiative: Geoff Petkus has continued to work with the IAB committees on standards and specs to unite both publisher and agency processes and data models.    

The new IAB audit will go a long way to standardize the industry.  An overwhelming amount of impressions are audited throughout the web, and verification systems will need to help the ecosystem and not hurt the process.  According to a survey Dan initiated, “Ad Ops is 50% more complex than it was 3 years ago”.  Fragmentation is out of control right now because of the different sites and structure in the marketplace.  While innovation and growth are not slowing down, the largest concern for media companies is “Inventory and Yield Management”.  A close second is “Billing Discrepancies.”

What does TRUE operational efficiency look like?   Buying, selling and executing digital advertising should be a transaction similar to eating out at a restaurant- you don’t HAVE to think about too hard.  As an industry, publishers and agencies spend too much time in petty details and legal issues and THIS needs to change. 

David Cohen of Universal McCann asked 3.5 Questions:

1. Characterize ad ops?  We NEED good people but we LOSE good people.  Others talked about challenging times with too many demands.  There are common sentiments about how this portion of business is perceived. 

2. Greatest improvements?  Better collaboration every day. 

3. Could discrepancies start going down?  Is this one of media’s greatest pains?  Consider the amount of time it takes to analyze the data, the manual processes and paper STILL involved the process.  We still need mutual trust, collaboration and transparency among publishers and agencies.

David shows a chart called the Road to Nirvana (not the band), and all of the pieces that need to change to make the system run a lot smoother.  It starts with something as easy as RFP standardization, and continues to T&C’s.  Late creative is another big issue that needs to be solved. 

2010 is our year.  Simple dialogue can go a long way.  The only constant right now is that the rate of innovation is fast.

David’s prediction for 2015 is that there will be two different camps: High volume vs Premium publishers. 

Total commercial websites will drop dramatically.  In 2015, MSA’s will be signed at the beginning of the year in order to make life much easier.

No one sets out with a business model that requires giving money back for delivering valuable products.  Yet, that’s effectively what most publishers are doing with Makegoods and over-delivery. Some have acknowledged the seriousness of the issue and have developed a patchwork of tools in Excel to do a better job of campaign management.  However, these are rarely forward looking or timely to respond in business real-time to a poorly performing campaign.

There are many reasons for campaigns to under perform: the product was oversold, the forecast was wrong, trafficking errors were not caught, and, everyone’s favorite, ad serving delivery discrepancies. How serious is this issue? How about at least $400m annually in the US! That’s assuming just 5% of IAB’s estimate for display ad revenue ($3.8B for 1H09) is disputed.  Our anecdotal discussions with publishers indicate that the number may be even higher.

The good news is that much of the loss can be mitigated by actively managing campaigns, early and frequently.  Automation can easily replace the manual routine that most publishers find themselves in: log into third party ad server, export report, pull it into Excel, reconcile with primary ad server data; repeat for every third party ad server; repeat as many times a month as you can – realistically, just once. Oh by the way, account for changed passwords, misaligned data and just try to get the data right, forget about analysis.

For those of you stuck in this resource-sucking treadmill, we have good news.

Today we are announcing Operative.One Campaign360, a product that makes it easy for publishers to centrally manage and proactively monitor campaigns.  It improves virtually every step of the campaign management process:

• “lights out” integration and collection of data from primary and third-party ad server
• Automatic reconciliation of primary and third party line items
• A simple, grid-based UI for manual reconciliation and overrides
• Robust analysis with pre-built graphs and reports for common tasks such as delivery discrepancy, pacing, top 10/bottom 10 campaigns

All the information that you need to do campaign management and billing is in one place, keeping you from having to do hours of leg work to collect the data, reconcile it, and create reports.

In other words, the product does all the heavy lifting and you focus on making sure that you get all the revenue that your sales team worked hard to book.

Based on our experience of 10 years working with publishers, we are really excited about the potential this product has in improving publisher operations. Learn more about the campaign management and discrepencies in our white paper, Making Peace with Discrepancies: Six Steps You Can Take to Proactively Manage Them, learn more about the product and contact us .

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.

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.

Marti Funk (Sportgenic), me, and Steve Patrizi (LinkedIn)

After going attending iMedia in Austin last week and spending lots of time with VPs of Ad Sales & Media Directors, one thing is still clear.  It’s really hard to get in front of an agency to influence an RFP.  It requires effort, research and diligence…and since all those things sound like “work”, too many media sellers take the easy way out; just trying to get on the RFP.  By just trying to get included in the circulation of a document that’s already been co-authored by your competition, you are setting yourself up for certain failure.  Failure may be too strong; you may get a small spend, but most times, you’ll never hear back from them or if you do, you may hear something like, “you weren’t the right fit” or “we went in another direction”…sounds like a interview rejection. 

Now, in defense of media teams everywhere, there are some real obstacles to influencing the agency.  Last Monday morning down in Austin, I attended John Durham’s (Catalyst SF) panel titled, “Trading Places”.  This is where 4 heads of media sales got on stage with 4 heads of media buying to air their issues.  The publishers brought up great points around why its so hard to get in front of and deal with an agency:

1) David Blumenfeld mentioned how “agencies are always looking for that outside the box idea, but make sure it’s inside the spreadsheet.” 

2) My favorite one was the cream cheese incident by Carter Brokaw from Meebo…where you get a meeting with a power person at an agency to join your pitch and the only person there is a junior media buyer asking “where’s the veggie cream cheese?”  They also came to the meeting without a pen or notebook. 

3) And of course, the classic, “We need you guys to really surprise us on this one, get creative and we need a response from you by EOD tomorrow.”

So now what…it’s hard to get a meeting with a decision maker, it’s hard to get the lion share of the budget, it’s hard to influence the RFP and when you do win the biz, it’s hard to keep them coming back.  Here are some thoughts to help you navigate through these erratic waters:

1) Getting a Meeting with a Decision Maker:  people with the “power of the pen” are often getting lots of emails and calls.  Hundreds per day.  Sorting through the clutter is time consuming and usually emails are just skimmed for pockets of interesting ideas.  If you are sending an email or leaving a voice mail, make sure you are giving someone a good reason to call you back.  Find out why their previous campaigns failed, if they post a personal blog and what challenges their clients have had in the past taking products to market. 

That said, you can do all the right things and still not get the meeting, so then what?  Educate your media buyer to sell for you.  I had lunch with Darren Herman from The Media Kitchen yesterday.  “Don’t ignore the media buyer”, he said.  Most of the ideas he takes on are ones that are pitched to him from his media team.  If you don’t think your media buyer can share 3 compelling reasons with their boss on why you should be included, get back in there (and keep it simple, don’t overwhelm them with slideware).

2) Getting ahead of & Influencing the RFP:  I sat in Scot McLernon’s Upstream breakfast last week, also in Austin and this was a big topic.  Lizzie Widhelm, VP of West Coast Sales for Pandora Media sat on the panel and had some interesting ideas.  “Find the opportunities where there are not opportunities already.”  Like, if you wanted to sell to Coke, Pepsi or Gatorade, go to a food an beverage show since that’s where people are trying to figure things out.  “You won’t find many digital media folks there at all.”  Get your idea out early and plant that seed ahead of time at the right levels…by the time an RFP is under way with an Agency, that seed will be planted in cluttered soil and the chances for growth are slim.  

3) Keeping them Coming Back:  Back at an iMedia a couple of years ago, Randy Wooton from Microsoft Advertising Solutions said a “5% increase in customer loyalty can equal a 25-85% increase in overall profit.”  Ad serving language is often times foreign to a sales rep.  Make it easy for your sellers to report back to your client in business friendly terms & have all your data in one place.  This way, when you call on them to become part of the next big idea, you know what happened in the past, where things went wrong and what they could do better.  If you can’t influence the RFP, at least when you get it, having the information at your finger tips around what they paid, if it delivered on time and what you optimized for them during the campaign, can go a long way.

Although some of this may seem like actual “work”, keep in mind pain ripples within AND ouside your organization.   If you are frustrated, chances are, your customer is frustrated too.  Being prepared for meetings and helping to educate them on a consistant basis will often benefit you both.