This is the final part of our series on The Ad Ops Mid-Year Tune Up, catch up with Part 1 and Part 2.
In this bookend to our series on the mid-year ad ops tune up, it’s all about looking forward. If you’re like most Ad Ops people, what keeps you in the job is the exciting innovation happening all around you, and the fact that you get to play a key part in it. With rare exception, the companies that need Ad Ops people are exciting companies trying to build something new and different. It’s easy sometimes to lose track of that passion, and get bogged down in the minutia of the work, and that’s precisely why you have to devote time to keep learning. Getting the insider’s view on how the digital industry is changing, what the ad tech start up scene looks like, and where the innovation is what will keep you loving your job, so be sure you make time for it.
Refresh Your Industry Knowledge
A good way to get back in the fold of what the industry is doing is to take some vendor meetings and see some product demos. Tactically, use these meetings to stay up to date on what tools and services are out there, and get a refresh on how your platform partners stack up to the competition. Focus on reviewing service providers for the core tools you need – ad servers, data management platforms, RTB platforms, and etc, but take a few meetings from some oddball startups while you’re at it. Seeing what the smaller, cutting-edge players are working on might spur some ideas, and will keep you up to date on what the R&D side of the industry is doing at the very least. For the core services, try to get more than a sales rep in for a demo, but see if you can get a product person, sales engineer, and client services contact in the room or at least on the phone as well. Having a broad range of company representatives should allow you to take the meeting in whichever direction you like and get, shall we say, more accurate answers to those questions.
Specifically, try to get a sense of each companies’ roadmap, service plans, and pricing. For your existing partners, ask yourself if you are satisfied with the release schedule and functionality of the product to date, and if not, give those companies feedback and try to influence the direction. You may be able to have certain features re-prioritized for your benefit, or add an enhancement to a planned release. Perhaps there are new modules or products that you can access in beta that will solve a vexing operational challenge – think about how you work with your partners now to turn hacks into features, and enhance the usability of the platforms as well. In many cases, you can leverage your position as a guinea pig for discounted, free, or category exclusive use of the services and features that you play a key role in building.
Stay on Top of Vendor Relationships
Don’t forget about the state of your vendor partnerships, but use this time to make sure you know when your contracts expire for each platform. For those that are nearing expiration within the next 6 months, now is the time to start making decisions on if you’re going to stick with those relationships or not. Based on the review you did above, you can build a solid case of why your current partner is still best-in-class, or why and how they’ve fallen behind, and who now has the superior solution. In some cases, you may simply be able to alter your service with your current vendor and save yourself the headache of a migration. Perhaps you can consolidate services though; where you needed a video ad server or mobile ad server in the past, maybe the core players have caught up with a comparable offering. You might be able to adjust your service and support as well – you may have thought you needed the highest grade of support, but never really used it, or find that you didn’t sign up for it and were desperate for it.
Regardless of what you decide, you’ll need time to hash out business terms, work through legal queues, and if necessary, transition or upgrade systems. These projects have a tendency to sneak up on organizations and the less time you have to get your act together, the less negotiating power you’ll have, since most vendors will realize you can’t possibly migrate business critical systems in just a few weeks.
Room for Improvement
Finally, use this time to take an honest assessment, and seek advice and direction from your superiors on how you and your team are doing. Where have you done well this year, where can you do better, and where do you need to do better? As you made the effort during your report review in part 1, ask the business managers and teams you support throughout the company how your team can be more valuable, and where the pain points are. You can often diffuse bad-will and whatever tension has built up by getting everyone in the room for a brainstorming session on how you get to solutions for the business as a whole, no finger-pointing allowed. A calm and constructive tone is critical, but you will likely find that there can be some give and take on both sides – for example, your team can agree to faster turnaround times if other units can find a way to simplify their requests, or have all requests come through one team member so your department isn’t constantly retraining or having to answer the same questions again and again. Usually you’ll find other teams are willing to admit inefficiencies and areas where they can compromise during these sessions, which are win-win situations for the entire business. It may sound like common sense, but so many organizations fail to put a regular process in place to figure out how they get better – don’t let yours be one of them.
