Operative Blog

At most agencies, Ad Operations teams are typically brought in only right before a campaign’s launch date.  The media team works with the client and publishers for months to build and finalize a plan, the design team develops the creative, and only AFTER this does the Ad Operations team step in to traffic.  By bringing Ad Operations into the media planning process much earlier, you can create more robust media plans, ensure that launch dates are met, and determine a process that reduces back and forth communication.

1. Most media planning teams are focused on one or only a few clients, but Ad Ops teams typically work with a dozen or more advertisers and execute a variety of types of campaigns.  Ad Ops sees it all—different vendors, types of targeting, audience segmentation, etc.  As a planner, if you explain what kind of campaign you are looking to run and what kind of targeting you want to do, Ad Ops may be able to inform you of better ways to achieve your goals within your ad server. Leverage the experience your Ad Ops team or partner has gained from working on past clients and campaigns…it may help you build a more targeted, customized media plan.

2. Before promising your client the swift implementation of a creative or technology you haven’t worked with before, give your Ad Ops team a call.  For instance, if you are gearing up for a campaign and your client wants to use a new rich media vendor, loop in your operations team.  If Ad Ops has worked with the technology solution before, they may be able to provide feedback based on past experience; like complexity of ad trafficking, how long the implementation process might take, etc.  Working closely with your ad operations team can help you set realistic time lines that meet your needs as well as your advertiser’s.

3. Your Ad Ops team can also be a great resource for building process.  Launch dates can be delayed if information is missing or creative isn’t built correctly.  Ad Ops can help media planners develop tools like trafficking sheets, timelines, specification grids or checklists.  Sometimes simply listing what Ops will need from you (site contacts, URLs, specific trafficking instructions) beforehand will limit the back and forth communication that often delays implementation. 

As you prepare for a busy Q4, consider Ad Ops as a resource for MUCH more than just trafficking.  Don’t be afraid to get on the phone and pick your trafficker’s brain if you have an idea that you are not sure how to execute.  If you view your traffickers as partners, your campaigns and clients will benefit.

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Caitlin O’Reilly, Operations Manager, Operative

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

FFL and Digital Media

Anyone know what time of year it is?  That’s right, it’s fantasy football draft season.  If you’ve played before, you know that draft season is the most stressful time of year.  This is when you have to sit down, look at all the players that are available and decide which ones will help you win a fantasy football championship.  There are many strategies that you can deploy, and the most conventional is to draft running backs- fast, furious and early on.  Why?  They are the steady players that give you consistent point production.  But, fantasy football has changed.  Some NFL teams now use multiple running backs (AKA running back by committee).  Other teams have moved away from running the ball all together and have opted for the exciting air attack.  This opened up opportunities for fantasy owners to structure their teams around additional point contributors like a Quarter Back like Drew Brees or a Wide Receiver like Larry Fitzgerald.  Decisions, decisions. 

How does fantasy football relate back to digital media? 

Well, it’s also technology budgeting season.  Today’s publishers and specialty ad networks feel the stress of making technology decisions for 2011.  They have to sit down, review all the projects they are going to push for and make a stake in the ground that “these are the initiatives that will put us in the best position to win”.  

Many of these projects will fall into 2 categories.  The first category is revenue.  Plain and simple, if that project is successful, it will directly help you make money.  There should be no ambiguity.  Some example projects include:

• Developing custom creative programs to help you attract new brands
• Building a mobile, video or  social media ad server that promotes engagement metrics or gives you a competitive advantage in the market place
• Introducing rich media tools

The second category is around helping companies drive efficiency inside and outside their organization.  Below are some examples of efficiency-focused initiatives:

• Syncing your publisher/partner/network management systems
• Evaluating and deploying reconciliation, reporting and billing tools
• Integrating with proposal , IO and media planning applications

In order to be successful in 2011, media companies need to do both.  You MUST do both.  If you don’t innovate, you won’t attract the big ad dollars.  If you only innovate and forget about the back-end efficiency, you’ll lose all the customers you won or have a ceiling on the amount of customers you can take-on due to inefficiency.  Quite the predicament. 

For most media companies, there are the few factors contributing to this problem:

1. You’ve got 1 engineering team and they are drinking through a fire hose.  I don’t care who you are…if you’re a digital media owner in some capacity, your engineering team has too much on their plate and not enough time.  Furthermore, with all the new technology in the market place, it’s just getting worse and worse.
2. Most publishers, even today, still run their business on excel.  There’s not one platform in place that you can use as a springboard for innovation.  Not one place to connect all these new things that you’re buying or creating.  This is also the reason your operations teams are so busy.  They have to log into 10 different systems to get their jobs done. No wonder there is so much demand for projects that create efficiency.
3. A large percentage of the technology and business leadership within media organizations still promotes a “let’s build it all” type of mentality.  For example, the industry hasn’t matured enough where the role of the CIO is relevant – there’s no one to advise the CEO on best practices on how to get information, drive revenue and scale (all at the same time).

If this sounds familiar and your ability to be successful depends on your engineering team executing, consider some of these ideas:

1. Make a list of all the projects you have on your plate for 2011.  From there, put a “$” next to each one that your sure will help you drive revenue next year.  Then, put an “E” next to the ones that will help your bottom line (efficiency gains, speed to market, etc.).  Getting clarity on what these projects actually “mean” for the business is the first step.  
2. From there, make the decision to partner with a company that can offer an enterprise platform to help you run your day to day business and gain those efficiencies (inventory management, proposals, packaging, trafficking, reporting, financial reconciliation, etc.).  Make sure your partner has an API and SDK to help you innovate.  You’ll find there are companies that can not only help you get deal with a lot of your “E”s, but also enable you to innovate the “$”s.
3. It’s important to ensure that the company’s technology culture has a strategic focus on revenue and strategic value creation.  I ran into one publisher recently who calls his engineering team “Team Money”.  That’s because their engineering leadership has a mentality of selecting projects that will help the company drive new revenue by establishing partnerships with companies that help them achieve greater efficiency.   This is a cultural change and isn’t always easy.  Engage your CEO in this concept – make it a big deal towards hitting the 2011 revenue number.

By focusing your engineering teams on things that are exciting (like drafting quarterbacks and wide receivers) and partnering with a company that can help you innovate and scale (your work horse running back), you’ll be in a better position to be successful in 2011…successful in beating your competition, meeting the new demands of brand advertisers, raising employee satisfaction in your engineering department and keeping both the top and bottom line on the up and up.

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.

Randall Rothenberg takes the stage to tell everyone we are not geeks, we ROCK STARS of interactive media. 

Nothing would be customized or accomplished without Ad Operations. 

We are the guardians of the data and without, there wouldn’t be any revenue.  This is our Woodstock.

Creatives used to be the rock stars- until they realized they needed ad ops to make the ads go live.  The future of this media depends on the skills of everyone in this room.  How do we make the internet flow as smoothly as possible?

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.

Our top tips to help Creative Houses and clients get highly creative creatives working!

When you work with a publisher that likes to dazzle their audience with the latest shiny ads and takeovers on a regular basis, you get used to a lot; takeovers, sidekick and pushdown ads that move the entire page around, pagemorphs, floor ads, game banners, synchronised ads,  … you name it, we’ve probably done them, usually delivered with only hours to spare before the campaign starts!

Due to the complexity of the creatives and with so many people being involved, it regularly happens that I end up checking the test pages with one eye on the clock – Murphy’s Law states this will always happen on Friday afternoons. Generally, the creative houses and agencies I work with are often quite small, and have a high rotation of personnel and with it the knowledge and experience.

I remember one problematic campaign, spending days emailing the client about a creative issue, eventually, I ended up talking to ‘Bob’ (altered his name to protect the guilty…), in his converted garden-shed, convinced he was the greatest flash designer ever… 20 minutes later I was still explaining to him about the basics such as button actions. By the time we resolved the issues through many emails, it was green lit, the very day the campaign ended. When we told him it was assigned he replied with “All right!!!” … needless to say we never received another creative from ‘Bob’ again.

So how do you prevent something like that from happening?

-          Your client needs to trust you … that you know your stuff and believe you can explain technical issues to anyone, this will give you direct access with their advertising agencies or creative houses (saving time and avoiding miscommunication).

-          Know who you are speaking to and talk on their level. If people feel you are talking jargon they don’t understand, they will most likely ignore it or pass it along and you’ll get nowhere fast. Make sure you know who you NEED to speak to as well, as you don’t have time to waste, chasing the wrong person.

-          Never send out the same “Here’s the tech spec” email more than once. If the designer didn’t get your explanation the first time, sending exactly the same email will not make them see the light. Call them.

-           Network. You never know when you need a favour from someone when your main contact is not available. I always have a 30 second chat with everyone I speak to and most importantly, NEVER fall out with anyone, as you will find that they are “in a meeting” when you most need them.

My final piece of advice, always remember, when faced with insurmountable odds, the phone is mightier than the email!