Uncharted waters
Picture this: You're the CEO of a company that is sailing along at a fast clip. Marketing is driving the brand. Sales is bringing in new business. What could possibly go wrong? As long as you can hand those contracts off to ad operations, they'll take care of it. What do those folks do all day long, anyway? Is it really important for you to know? It is, only if you want contracts and revenue to get fulfilled. I don't know, seems important to me.
Publishers get into trouble when ad operations are "out of sight, out of mind." This leaves crucial knowledge about how campaigns are trafficking, tested, measured, optimized and billed in the hands of a relatively few, extremely important individuals. This is particularly true when your ad operations crew is relatively small, or relatively new to the business. What happens if they decide to move on, get recruited by another company -- or even worse -- take most of the staff with them?
Now, you are in dire straits. Thousands of dollars of revenue ready to be trafficked, and virtually no-one in the company who knows how to navigate through the process.
Believe me, it happens.
Solution
Document the workflow and process associated with ad operations. This means "document" as in Visio flow charts and Word documents -- not a water cooler conversation. Give yourself and your company a fighting chance in a tough environment where supply of qualified ad operations individuals are scarce and demand is sky high. Better yet, if you're captain of the ship, don't you want to know how the crew is running it?
