Find out what was discussed when major publishers recently met to examine the future of behavioural targeting.

Recently, Revenue Science brought together ad operations leaders from several of our U.K. publishers to discuss their thoughts, insights and opinions about behavioural targeting. This was the perfect group to speak with, as ad operations teams are right in the nexus of several moving parts that make behavioural targeting successful. The session was very enlightening in demonstrating what everyone can do to ensure behavioural campaigns (and really, any campaigns) run smoothly and how publishers can provide the best levels of service.

I would like to thank Patricia Kill director of ad operations from News International for graciously hosting the event and for such strong attendance from our publisher partners.

Here are just a few of key observations:

Over-communicating is crucial
As the ad salesperson is the centre of communication among the agency/advertiser and ad operations (and any other parties), it is critical that they over-communicate with all parties to ensure everything runs smoothly. This is especially true when doing behavioural campaigns. There needs to be a clear discussion between the agency and the publisher on the audience target and the campaign goals, and these need to be communicated with multiple teams inside the publisher. When the timeline is tight (which frequently happens these days), this line of communication becomes critical for everyone. "Part of the reason we’ve been successful with behavioural targeting delivery and satisfaction is the clear communication between operations and the sales team, via our behavioural champion on the sales team", says Jonathan Murt, campaign coordinator for The Guardian.

Clear definitions are key
Oftentimes an audience target will be passed to the ad operations team with minimal definition. For example, passing along a request for 'engaged car researchers' is usually not a good enough definition. It is much better if the ad salesperson and the agency or advertiser have a deeper discussion about the target audience, the goals of the campaign, the behaviours that the target audience is most likely taking and any special traits of this audience. In the car example above, you are missing a key to the target audience: is it for family cars, or sporty cars or luxury cars for instance? If family, is it for large families, or new families or green families? All of these data points will help your ad operations team suggest the most relevant segments, which will ensure a much better experience. "When we have a clear idea of exactly who the advertiser is targeting, it greatly helps us to use an appropriate existing audience segment, or it tells us exactly how to create a bespoke segment with the right mix of reach and relevance", says Patricia Kill, director of advertising operations for News International.

Keep an eye on your segments
With the advanced behavioural targeting tools today, you can create highly targeted bespoke segments. And as more behavioural targeting campaigns run, there could be a fear amongst ad operations teams that the volume of bespoke audience segments can become too large to manage. Some of the tricks for managing large numbers of segments in an interface are clean naming conventions, an agreement across the team on how many segments will be available at any given time, an ongoing process to delete old segment definitions for campaigns which are not running any more, and agreement about how many active campaigns will be based on standard/pre-existing segment definitions and how many will be based on bespoke/per-campaign definitions. Once these rules are in place, it becomes much easier to manage a user interface and ensure smooth operation. Financial Times, The Guardian, Reuters, News International and The Telegraph are a few of the publishers that routinely clean up their behavioural segment list to keep it relevant and manageable, and everyone agrees it is a good ongoing exercise.

Rely on your partners
This industry is stressful and action-packed on the slowest of days, and completely manic on others. It's important that you utilise every resource to help you build audience segments, and your behavioural targeting partner should be providing this service. Your behavioural targeting partner can help with segment definition, best practices, clean-up of old definitions and even help with inventory forecasts. "Whether we’re working closely with our behavioural champion on the sales team or Revenue Science directly, it is imperative that we keep in close contact and use every resource to deliver everything on time as expected", says Chris Hulme, advertising operations manager for Channel Four.

As you can see, our conversation always returned to the theme of seamless communication.

Do you have any tips or tricks for how to ensure behavioural targeting smoothly integrates with your existing ad operations processes? I'd love to hear and share them too. And remember to give your local ad operations team a big pat on the back the next time you see them -- they deserve it.

Jeremy Mason is European director of client service for Revenue Science, Inc.