Addressing Ad Network’s Ad Ops Woes

Introduction

A leading Ad Network in USA, which is primarily catering to wedding related Publishers, has around 35-40 Publishers currently in their network. They also work with marquee Agencies and Brands to help them reach the right audiences via their Publishers. They manage the advertising campaigns for Agencies and Brands and monetization for these Publishers via Google Ad Manager, Display and Video 360 and Teads Video and other platforms.

Problem and Impact

Large and frequent campaign under and over deliveries: There was no centralized place to track campaigns running on its network of Publishers. Campaign tracking reports coming from 3^rd parties had become unmanageable to track pacing, performance and discrepancies related to these campaigns. This lack of tracking had resulted in campaigns getting over and under delivered resulting huge revenue loss in terms of short billing or make goods.

Poor campaign performance: Each direct campaign was run across many different ad sizes, ad types and Publishers. This combination made it really difficult to figure out which type of campaigns performed well on which types of Publishers. The combinations and associated data were so large, that it was humanely impossible to collect, process and analyze the data in real-time for drawing any conclusion and making effective changes. Typically, the approach was to run the campaign on all the Publishers and then after a week being to optimize it. This would result in budget being wasted as the performance was not as per Agencies / Brands benchmark.

No inventory supply tracking: Delivery of campaigns depended heavily on ad opportunities (inventory supply). But this inventory supply was not always steady which would have impact on campaign delivery as well as performance. There would be situations where inventory supply for a Publisher may suddenly increase or drop or at times stop. The team wouldn’t realize this until campaign pacing had dropped and precious time was lost.

Incorrect and delay billing and reconciliation: The month-end billing and invoicing process involved compiling reports from all the ad servers with different reporting metrics and checking for any discrepancies. The process used to take between 10 – 15 days. It was also prone to errors and adjustments were needed frequently. Each sites’ revenue share was different, and this caused causing errors in manual reporting.

Header Bidding data challenge: The Customer was using header bidding solution for monetization. There were more than 10 Demand Partners within the header bidding solution. To understand the discrepancy and revenue generated from each partner, Ad Ops team would have to get data from all the Demand Partners. As the KPI for a Header Bidding setup was different from a normal programmatic partner, they were unable to fully understand the performance. This resulted in missed opportunities and loss in revenue.

Solution and its Impact:

This Publisher network decided to partner with YuktaMedia and implemented their YuktaOne Media ERP. Here’s a summary of how YuktaOne Media ERP addressed their business challenges and enabled them to take their business to the next level:

Centralized repository for campaign data: YuktaOne helped the Customer’s Ad Ops team create a centralized database for all campaigns running across the Network. It contained compete information of all over 1,000 line items for a year. In addition to that Campaign related data such as IO, 3rd party raw data, creatives and campaign pacing and performance was also stored. For productivity purposes campaigns could be signed to one more team member for management.

Automate campaign performance optimization: In order to get the right performance to meet Advertiser / Agency KPIs, YuktaOne Media ERP was used to analyze historical performance of campaigns and campaign types on various Publishers, ad sizes and ad types. Using this historical performance data, budget was spent on the right type of Publishers right at the beginning of the campaign, thereby saving a lot of budget which would overwise have been spent without getting the expected ROI.

Alerts for inventory supply tracking: Supply trend dashboard provided quick access to Ad Ops and Publisher Ops team. They could see if there was sudden spike or drop in the supply and what the potential impact of that could be on campaign delivery. They could simply use the filter and choose the Ad Unit/units they wanted to analyze. This helped them understand which Ad Unit was doing well and which one required attention. Operations team could set up alerts so that they wouldn’t have to manually hunt for inventory where supply had spiked or dropped. This save a lot of time and made taking actions fast.

Automated billing and reconciliation: Using the YuktaOne billing app, Customer’s Finance team was able to generate invoices and payouts to both Publisher and Ad Networks directly from YuktaOne itself. To ensure data accuracy, numerous validation checks were implemented at each data processing stage. The billing process was reduced to less than a week after end of the month and manual errors were completely removed.

Publisher and Advertiser Portals: YuktaOne provided a separate dashboard for each Publisher managed by the Customer. This increased customer satisfaction as each Publisher was able to view its data in real-time. Similarly, on the Advertisers and Agency side, they were able to see their IO fulfillment details and take decisions around shifting budgets. Customer’s Ad and Revenue Ops and Account Management team were able to collaborate with their respective Clients via YuktaOne Media ERP. Customers got notifications when payments were done or when invoices were generated.

The Conclusion:

All the teams in the Client’s organization are now working from the same data set, now called as the ‘Gold Mine’! Everyone has 24×7 access to the data they need. Not only that most of what they need is already available as out of the box reports and dashboard. Historical data and trends are their fingertips to make everyday data driven decision-making. Decisions are taken within hours if not minutes as opposed to waiting for days. CRO and CEO have complete visibility to their cross channel and cross geo business with alerts and recommendations getting delivered to their inbox every day. In numbers…

Over 50 reports generated every month with countless dashboards.
New Supply / Demand partner data automation in just a few days.
Around 240K saved in personnel costs per year due to report automation and analysis.
Over 30 Publishers payments auto generated and available for Publisher to track their using YuktaOne Publisher Portal.
Revenue at risk has reduced from saving under delivery from earlier 15% to almost negligible resulting in saving of 60K per year.