Managing internal tension

The conflict between editorial and revenue has long been a challenge for any content creation company, digital or otherwise. It is common enough to have earned the nickname “church and state,” which can be overheard in conversation among the snack rooms and meeting pods. The best companies - those with the strongest leadership teams - actively manage this challenge on an ongoing basis. Failure to do so can be a fatal mistake. Less discussed in mainstream media is the inevitable tension that exists between sales, ad ops, account management, marketing and other teams involved in the commercial side of the business. This is almost universally present for digital publishers, the world we at 360ops find ourselves living in every day. The causes of these tensions are too many to list, but they include an overall lack of accountability, undefined processes, sales teams that “do whatever it takes” to close deals, a feeling that individuals are single handedly “protecting the brand” and shoddy technology infrastructure which becomes a scapegoat for ad operations errors (not to mention just plain errors).

In many cases, organizational structure exacerbates a powder keg environment, such as having certain support teams report into a CRO or revenue-driven executive and others report into a COO or operational-focused leader. This type of org is destined for failure unlessthose executives work well together and are in lock step at all times. Another organizational pitfall is having lopsided resources on one team versus another. This can be due to budget constraints, high turnover or decision makers simply not understanding the effort takes to get work done. For managers and leaders, awareness is key: make 1 on 1 time with your direct reports sacred and frequent. Conduct regular skip level 1 on 1s with the most junior level individual contributors. Spend time on the front lines: in brainstorms, kickoff calls and pacing meetings. Know enough about the process to speak intelligently on it and facilitate improvements. Take what you hear with a healthy skepticism and validate it yourself. Managing people is hard and managing people in one of these environments in harder. Doing these things will greatly improve the chance of success in addressing the most difficult situations.

If you ask the typical ad operations team, the primary cause of nearly every problem plaguing their team is sales (often enabled by account management). The sales team is seen as spineless, responding to every client request with an immediate yes and not bothering to understand even the basic mechanics of how campaign execution works. In some cases, perhaps this may be true. Most of the time, however, the reality is more complex. Humans are driven by incentives and the reason most of us work is to have the funds to do the things we actually enjoy. Salespeople in the digital media world, with few exceptions, are compensated on the gross revenue they bring into the business. Certainly without this function, no one else in the building would have a paying job. This fact is often ignored by other teams and frequently pointed out by the salespeople themselves. Culture is a frustratingly nebulous, yet incredibly important thing in revenue-driven organizations. Culture tends to evolve over time and while the tone may be set by founders and C-level executives, more often than not the true heart of a sales team’s culture comes from the VPs and Directors who manage individual salespeople. If these people are frantic, reactive and weak, chances are that these traitspermeate throughout the rest of the team. When this happens, the environment can become a cesspool of misery, black holes of people gasping for air and dreading every single Monday morning.

The way out is through empathy (and of course removing the cancerous managers as soon as possible). As a trafficker or campaign manager, I must be able to put myself in the sales person’s shoes and develop the ability to approach every situation with a commercial mindset: “how can I create value for the client AND our business?” When this becomes the default mindset, it is harder to point fingers and easier to remember that everyone ultimately shares the same end goal. The salesperson must think beyond the dollar signs that light up their eyes when the client asks a qualifying question. Is this a reasonable request in general? What will this mean for my team? Am I confident it will actually drive results for the customer? Can I buy extra time for my counterparts to respond with confidence? This approach is present across all world-class teams. It is why the best salespeople, both in terms of ability to bring in revenue and who are beloved by their colleagues, often come up the ranks through account management or media planning. They are able to discern reality from fantasy and come up with creative and impactful solutions on the fly because they have a strong foundational knowledge.

The last thing I want to mention as it relates to internal tensions is the most important, and it can be summed up with a single word: ownership. In teams where every single member is held accountable for their actions, high-performance is much more likely. My favorite book on the topic, Extreme Ownershipby Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, discusses the concept of extreme ownership from a military point of view, where many decisions have life or death consequences. It’s important to remember that most of us do not have jobs where someone is going to die because of an error in judgement, however we should hold ourselves (and our colleagues) accountable for everything in our world. This means that if a salesperson provides the wrong specs to a client, the immediate reaction from their ad ops / account management counterparts should be “how can I give them what they need to respond to similar requests appropriately in a way they will understand” and not “they have been given access to the shared drive with that information multiple times, they should know it by now.” Of course, the flip side to this is the salesperson thinking “how can I educate myself and gain access to the information I need to do my job successfully” and not “how can I be expected to remember all these files and folders, I need someone to just give me the info when I need it.” Can you see how making the former way of thinking part of employees' DNA results in a healthy, efficient and high-output environment?

We work with companies of all shapes and sizes, from two person sites that simply want to publish good content to major media companies with ambitions of being the go-to content source for everything their audience may want. The larger and more complex the business, the greater the likelihood that internal friction will become a major roadblock to achieving goals. We often find ourselves guiding businesses through these growing pains, especially as it relates to organizational structure and best practices for cross-departmental collaboration. In many cases, the best approach is straightforward and simple. In others, some trial and error is involved. Sometimes the environment has become so toxic that internal teams feel as if there is no way out.  These companies are on the precipice of failure. Creating a healthy culture built on respect and shared goals is going to be extremely difficult and may take years. It will most likely require difficult personnel decisions. They will need to establish a level of transparency that may make senior leadership uncomfortable. The alternative, however, is far worse. Accepting things as they are means they can expect to watch as their culture and financial results deteriorate to the point of no return.

How to know if your team is bullshitting you

Throughout my 15 years working with digital publishers, there have been consistent themes when it comes to advertising sales, monetization and ad operations. They all struggle with reporting and data: highly manual to update, inconsistent nomenclature across many disparate sources, lack of real-time insights. They are all navigating an ever-evolving landscape: from changing user behavior to new ad units to regulatory challenges. Most critically, the people on the ground doing the real work - digital account managers, ad operations leads, campaign managers - are wearing multiple hats, juggling many projects and spread way too thin. At least, thats how it appears on first glance.

Quite often, teams that are stressed and overworked simply suffer from an overwhelming lack of structure and process. This commonly results from sales teams that allow clients to dictate all expectations, rather than  establishing a common ground that’s required for a healthy business relationship. When we engage new digital publishers, we quickly identify where the gaps are and work with internal ad ops, client service and sales teams to streamline wherever possible. Sometimes this means creating simple documentation that ensures all parties are aligned and understand responsibilities. Other times it is overhauling an entire workflow and installing new software that allows for better protection of inventory and faster execution of campaigns. In most cases, we’ve been able to make a substantial impact by addressing very real challenges based on past experiences.

In other cases, those who claim to be so busy that their work continuously suffers simply should not be. Obviously, we don’t know what their entire day looks like. They may have myriad responsibilities, from maintaining a website in the absence of an in-house development team to interfacing with vendors and clients despite being in a primarily internal or technical role. However, after weeks or months of working with such individuals, it often becomes clear that they are not managing their time wisely. This may not be their fault at all. They might be required to attend too many meetings, many of them a complete waste of time. They may fail to appropriately prioritize the deluge work in front of them. They might become distracted by unimportant goings on within their office. As far as their boss is concerned, these people are doing their very best given the situation they've been presented with. Despite their best efforts, mistakes are made, deadlines are missed and internal/external parties are frustrated with the lack of responsiveness.

The consistent feedback to managers in these situations is that there is simply too much work and not enough resources to address the needs of the business. Rare is the digital publisher with lavish budgets for ad operations and sales operations, however this is almost never the entire story. More often, there is a perfect storm of conflicting issues: lack of experience or expertise, high turnover resulting in continually short staffed teams, insufficient process (especially documented and adhered-to process) and myriad other challenges. Managers and site owners almost never have relevant enough experience to challenge these employees with any credibility. They simply have to take what what they are told at face value and address it as best they can.

So, what to do in this situation? One option is to make a very senior hire, someone who has been there, done that and can appropriately call BS or institute impactful processes. Challenge: these people are expensive and difficult to retain unless they experience consistent growth and development. Another is for the manager/publisher to get in the weeds themselves and learn the specifics of each situation. Challenge: by far the most time-intensive option and likely to result in lack of focus at best and total burnout at worst. Hiring a more junior person to handle the day-to-day minutiae which must get done is also an option. Challenge: they are typically only capable of following existing processes rather than coming up with efficiencies and improvements to help the business. These people are also difficult to retain and rightly always looking for the next step in their career. Lastly, publishers might consider bringing in outside help in the form of consultants or category experts. Challenge: these people are not full time employees and thus may potentially not be as invested in your success. However, if you choose the right partner, not only will they be able to advise you on situations where inefficiencies exist, but they will care as much if not more about your success than the typical employee. At 360ops, we pride ourselves on building long term (often many years) relationships with our clients and believe deeply in adding value at multiples of what our fees are. If you think your team may be suffering from any of these far too common common ailments and that they can actually be addressed, we would love to hear from you.

On staying lean

Anyone with a passing interest in the digital media world has likely noticed a recent spate of layoffs, from niche publishersto large platforms. It seems that within the context of ad budgets being under pressure on numerous fronts, no one is immune. For many months, the drumbeat was (and to some extent still is) all about Facebook and Google eating up every last incremental dollar flowing online. Then Facebook was faced with an avalanche of bad news and the tide seemed to turn against them. However, I don’t believe the recent negative sentiments will hold - at least from advertisers and agencies - and that until there is a true revolt on behalf of users who flock elsewhere, the platforms with the largest and most targetable audiences will inevitably capture the greatest share of the ad revenue pie. That said, as I have written about before, those publishers with the right mix of context, audience and technology will be positioned to do battle with these platforms over the long run. When faced with the kind of pressure this landscape presents, the companies with the healthiest margins and least overhead are most likely to survive while those that have been aggressively hiring or investing in technology or systems will be faced with extremely difficult choices.

Having witnessed several startup evolutions from early stage to semi-mature, I can confidently say that one of the most difficult things to do is to correctly gauge the amount of investment required for anticipated growth. Companies in acceleration phases tend to want to throw fuel on the fire in order to hit that next level as soon as possible. In many cases - especially hyper-competitive industries - this appears to be not only the prudent, but the only option. In the digital publishing world, this tends to mean increased staffing in order to produce more content or sell and support more ad campaigns. The problem is ramping up too quickly and/or not hitting key goals that were assumed possible only if that ramp were to take place. Facing steep losses, this is when companies are forced to enact layoffs and terminate contracts with key vendors that may have led to major internal efficiencies.

I am a proponent of slower, methodical, more organic growth. This is all but impossible once a firm has raised venture capital funding, but there are many more options for firms that choose to add headcount or vendor costs only when absolutely necessary. For any consulting business like ours, it is difficult if not impossible to scale without adding staff, but I have resisted doing so quickly both because of the inherent headaches and because finding talent that is also a good fit is critical. Because we are completely distributed and our clients exist across multiple time zones, finding individuals who not only have the right skillset and background but the discipline to remain productive on a flexible schedule is quite difficult. There is also value in remaining small enough that we can offer a highly personalized level of service.

Last year I read the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, which is about companies that have chosen to remain small (this of course being a relative term to the type of business and industry) despite achieving what would widely be considered financial success. From breweries to construction companies to storage businesses, the owners of those profiled often placed a higher value on personal and employee happiness rather than growth for growth’s sake. They were not opposed to growing, and nearly all of them did over time, but they did so methodically and intentionally, frequently pausing deliberately before making key hires our investments. Our business culture lionizes companies with meteoric rises (whether perceived or actual) to the point where nearly every aspiring entrepreneur (even me) yearns to start the next unicorn, but its important to realize that there is no singular right way. Not just for the sake of greater personal satisfaction for owners and employees alike, but because many times it is the least risky and most logical way to march toward an endgame, whatever that may be.

Staying lean doesn’t mean suffering. You may need to be pickier about the type of customers you take on. You may need to be more ruthless about prioritization and say no to things that might have promise but will distract you from your core mission. Practically, there are many options available today for business owners who choose not to build the largest team their financial position will allow for. You can outsource or hire consultants. You can partner with low-cost platforms on which to scale. For several extreme examples, look no further than Elaine Pofeldt’s The Million Dollar, One-Person Business, which is another profile of entrepreneurs and companies that have chosen to remain small, even down to a single individual. The ways in which these entrepreneurs leverage the modern-day tools at their disposal in order to scale is inspirational. 

I think every business owner or leader can benefit from spending even a few minutes per month thinking this way. At the very least, if you can establish a cultural philosophy of staying as lean as possible for as long as possible, you will be better prepared when macroeconomic winters do inevitably arrive.

How much process is too much?

We spend most of our time working with startups and companies experiencing a growth phase in one way or another. In some cases we are running their ad operations end-to-end. In others we are providing strategic guidance on what to focus on and what to avoid. In every situation we have been retained to either make things easier for the publisher or make them more money. Occasionally, we will step into a fairly well defined process. More often, however, part of our scope includes defining or improving processes. There is a delicate balance between the Wild West of the earliest days and becoming mired in a bureaucracy of processes that were originally implemented for very good reasons.

One of the biggest assets startups and small businesses have is the ability to move quickly. Maintaining that speed and agility as companies grow beyond the proverbial garage where they were founded becomes more and more difficult over time. For digital publishers especially, the complexity of doing business requires that processes are implemented in order to create internal alignment and deliver an exceptional experience for customers. Examples of this include:

- Pre and post-sale checklists designed to transfer knowledge from the client to the initial point of contact (often a salesperson) to the internal teams responsible for execution, from project management to ad operations. 

- Calendars for scheduling certain products such as takeovers, roadblocks or newsletters.

- Business rules around budgeting for the promotion of branded content and/or traffic buying in order to satisfy impression-based media obligations.

There are countless others, but these illustrate some of the most common first steps publishers take to create order out of chaos. The risk is that processes like these begin to replace basic common sense, or that teams use them as a shield (or a weapon) against others within the organization. When employees struggle to even keep track of all the documentation for internal processes, you know there is a problem. Also, its possible to develop a culture of creating processes where none are particularly necessary. In our experience, the best companies have written frameworks in place with enough flexibility for individual contributors and managers to make the right decisions when it matters. Focusing on the most critical aspects of the business, or those that tend to cause the most problems, is a good way to prioritize. 

Don’t try to boil the ocean. Create processes, document them in easy to understand language, and keep them updated. Instill a sense of teamwork and encourage people to use common sense. Its far more important that people are able to work together collaboratively than follow a rigid set of rules.

Fear can be a motivator or a killer

The beginning of 2018 is a scary time to be a digital publisher. Facebook recently overhauled its news feed to focus less on content from brands and more on “meaningful interactions” between friends and family. As someone who shut down their FB account years ago, I am not going to personally notice any impact of these changes, but given that I make a living working with digital publishers, it is something that everyone in my world is very concerned about. Reactions have ranged from outrage to gloating variations of “I told you so” and from asking FB to pay publishers a fee to begging users to manually adjust their settings. On the demand side of things, we are seeing an even more dramatic downturn in programmatic rates than is typical for Q1, with yields having fallen 30-50% on average. In some categories, it is even more pronounced. The realization that "pivoting to video” isn’t as simple as investing in a team that churns out content every day and watching the money roll in is starting to set in. The difficulty that publishers have in scaling and monetizing digital video is multifaceted. Attracting millions or tens of millions of users to O&O sites to watch video is damn near impossible. The options for monetization on the platforms where consumption does happen can be extremely limited. The technology and resources required to create a viable OTT business are significant. All of this combines to create an environment of fear and uncertainty, which for some publishers will mark the beginning (or middle) of the end while others will seize the moment and create a new, better, future.

Those companies that will thrive within this context have built cultures where challenging the status quo is a daily practice. Their leadership is unafraid to take one or two steps backward in order to take five (or ten) steps forward in the long run. They understand that becoming overly reliant on any external party, from monetization to audience to infrastructure, is like investing your entire life savings into Bitcoin on the day of your retirement: it works until it doesn’t. I expect diversification to be a key theme of 2018: diversification of traffic referral sources; diversification of programmatic demand sources; diversification of content types such as long form vs snackable; diversification of the types of ad units on O&O platforms. The publishers that are willing to try new things, see what sticks, and quickly kill the rest are the ones that will make it through the fire and emerge battle tested on the other side.

It takes a steady hand to operate in this environment. One must be aware of the trends but at the same time able to block out the noise and focus on the immediate tasks. Teams must operate in lock step as every dollar becomes harder to come by. Sellers must be well educated on every product and how their offering can help drive results for advertisers. Account management teams must understand KPIs and set realistic expectations in line with internal benchmarks. Ad operations teams must execute flawlessly and utilize all available tools and systems to achieve results. Research and measurement teams need to wrap the entire program up in a tight story that shows how what was created, sold and executed actually delivered on what the advertiser originally asked for. This will be the only way to win renewals, even in endemic categories where year-over-year growth from a core set of advertisers became the expectation. The companies willing to place a relentless focus on the experience their users have and on delivering results for advertisers will be crowned as winners in the long run.

What should I expect?

This is one of the most common questions I hear from publishers large and small who are constantly evaluating new opportunities, technologies and partnerships. They want to know what the potential upside is of implementing that new ad unit or adding that new tool into their arsenal. From an ad operations and yield management standpoint, they want to know how much of a CPM lift can be expected by launching a solution like prebid.js for header bidding, or by activating Google’s Exchange Bidding and pulling additional demand into DFP. From a sales perspective, they want to know what kind of edge they will have, if any, by enhancing their measurement capabilities via 3rd party data sources like credit card processors or review sites. Product people want to know how much time spent, pageviews per session or other key performance metrics might improve by implementing 3rd party optimization tools.

Despite each vendor promising seamless, hassle-free implementation, these initiatives still require internal resources and effort that could otherwise have been spent on something else. Thus the underlying factors behind go/no-go decisions include the effort required, disruptions to internal roadmaps, and perhaps most importantly, the potential upside or impact. Oftentimes, because the impact is vague or unknown, the default decision is to simply punt to a later date. I have done this countless times myself and almost always realized later that it would have been better to either schedule the implementation immediately or give the project (and the vendor) a firm no. We spend far too much time dealing with inbound cold calls and follow ups and providing honest reasons why something does not make sense or cannot be done would eliminate a lot of this noise.

Many times, unless the opportunity is completely nascent, other people in the decision-maker or business-stakeholder position will have experience with the product, vendor or technology you are considering. Reaching out to get feedback - assuming you trust it will be unbiased - is one of the best ways to evaluate whether something is worth pursuing. You get an idea of the effort required to get up and running, ballpark performance metrics and what the post-launch experience is like: customer service, ongoing enhancements, etc. If you can’t identify friends and colleagues who have experience with something, there are firms like ours that specialize in helping publishers evaluate new opportunities leveraging deep experience across a wide range of verticals, technologies and platforms.

In the absence of someone to speak to about new opportunities and initiatives, the best thing to do is consider the roadmap you already have in front of you and determine if the potential upside is significant enough to interrupt that schedule. Part of being a leader and business stakeholder means making decisions with incomplete information. The companies that consistently innovate are not afraid to take risks. Equally as important if not more so, they are also willing to admit when something isn’t working and quickly pivot as needed.

What to do when times are tough

When things are going well, it's easy to keep employees happy and engaged, make snap decisions and create alignment across your organization. When you’re hitting your numbers, growing at a record clip each month, feeling the rush that comes with success, the hardest thing to do is stop and prepare for the inevitable time when those trends slow or reverse. Ultimately, every business will be faced with challenges that will test their resilience. The digital media world is no different, and many publishers are facing such challenges right now. Advertisers are cutting spend and evaluating their partners much more closely. Every dollar has become a dog fight. Facebook and Google continue to use their scale and data to absorb nearly every new dollar flowing into digital (not to mention tweak their algorhythms to the detriment of publishers). Changes in consumer behavior are straining the clicks = pageviews = impressions model.

Under this backdrop, it is more important than ever that publishers both large and small have processes in place so that employees can respond to difficult situations and make optimal decisions. Leaders at media companies must also be willing to discuss problems openly and address them head on. It is surprisingly difficult to filter out short term distractions and shiny objects and focus on the things that will create long term value.

Having worked at startups of various sizes, my opinion is that the single biggest contributor to all the negative things you hear about startup culture - from chaotic environments to high stress levels to directionless management - is an unrealistic set of goals. As soon as companies hit a high-growth stage, the prevailing belief is that they must continue to accelerate at the same or increasing rates in order to be successful. After all, they have multiple constituents to answer to: investors, boards of directors, employees. However, maintaining early stage growth rates indefinitely is nearly impossible. The only guarantee is that any pressure felt at the top will trickle down to all employees and manifest itself in a culture of infighting, blame and eventually burnout. This is not to say that the goals should be layups. They should be aggressive but achievable.

Numerous studies show that what employees want these days more than anything is to feel a sense of purpose, that they have a voice and that they are learning and growing every day. Assuming their compensation is adequate and they have a manager they can trust, focusing on employee growth and education can be one of the most impactful things a company can do. Establishing a clear vision and connecting the mission to the work employees are doing every day will go a long way to create that sense of purpose and meaning. By making weekly or bi-weekly 1 on 1 meetings between employees and managers sacred and using that time to discuss goals, priorities and challenges, the employee will feel heard and appreciated. The manager should spend at least 80% of this time listening. By investing in employees through training, conferences, and internal workshopping, they will be improving their craft which will give them a real sense of opportunity. It doesn’t have to be overly formal or expensive, but investing in your people can be game changing.

For publishers, one of the most difficult things to do is eliminate or forego something that is working and/or providing consistent revenue in order to address deeper underlying problems. Examples of this could be a traffic source that is providing a steady stream of users of dubious quality, or a monetization partner that compromises the user experience. The idea of removing these altogether can paralyze publishers from making decisions that will create more value over time. In these situations its important to play the long game and remember that most of the time, these types of businesses are the often the first to be challenged when sea change arrives. Taking one step back in order to take two or three steps forward is one of the hardest, but smartest things publishers can do.

When it comes to decision making, having a bulletproof internal process is absolutely critical in times of uncertainty or stress. If the boss or founder must make every important decision, the likelihood of bottlenecks and paralysis becomes extremely likely. Instead, empower top talent to solve problems autonomously and give them the tools to do so. Provide a framework for thinking about decision making and let them know that they will not be punished for their mistakes. When the going gets tough, if each employee knows that their manager and company leadership will have their back, they will be able to act swiftly and decisively to keep things moving in the right direction.

How do I know if that demand source is legit?

If you’re a publisher and you have a "contact us" email listed on your site, chances are you get multiple emails from demand sources and ad tech vendors nearly every day. From traditional ad networks to exchanges, from SSPs to vendors with proprietary ad units, the lumascape is certainly not getting cleaner. One of the most common questions we get from current and prospective clients is “who should we be working with?” Honestly, even with a birds-eye view across multiple verticals and different types and sizes of publishers it is still difficult to keep track. However, given how often this comes up and how important these decisions are, it is not something that can be ignored in the hopes that it will go away or resolve itself.

Based on our experience with dozens of different demand sources over years, here are some questions to ask and things to consider:

Has anyone heard of them? New vendors and platforms are popping up constantly. Its impossible to keep track of every firm and whether or not they are worth pursuing. Ask around. See if colleagues have heard of the company you’re evaluating, or better yet any firsthand experience. The demand sources for pubs is a good living document. Check reddit or do a google search.

How’s their English? While not always an immediate disqualifier, this should raise red flags. If their sales person cannot compose a simple legible email, what do you think their day-to-day support is going to be like? Read their website. If you find typos, boilerplate language, lack of an about us page with actual human employees/founders or no address on their contact us page, the risk is probably not worth the reward. One exception to this rule is if you are looking for significant international demand. In that case, if you’ve found a firm that matches up well with the audience you are looking to monetize, you will want to have a signed agreement and a clear understanding of their support process and availability before launching their tags.

Where does their demand come from? Do they have their own sales team or are they simply re-brokering demand from other sources? Any firm that claims to be able to get you higher yields from something you can do yourself is unlikely to deliver any long term value. The ad tech ecosystem is so rife with middlemen they are unavoidable, but at the very least you should make sure that they have their own sales channel or some proprietary technology that is more than just marketing hype.

What is their reporting dashboard like? You want access to daily data, broken out by ad unit or ad size and you want to be able to export it into excel. Plenty of other possible functionality, but these are must haves. Seems simple enough, but surprisingly uncommon.

Where do they perform best? Their top-performing geos should match up with your traffic. If your audience skews more mobile than desktop, you’ll want proprietary ad units and confirmation that mobile is a major focus of their business. If you run a heavily visual website with a lot of images, you may want to seek out a vendor that specializes in image-based monetization.

What are they willing to guarantee? Will they commit to a minimum spend? Ultimately, they need you as much as (if not more than) you need them. If they are asking to run a test, make them guarantee a CPM, ideally with 100% fill. They should also commit to spending a minimum amount. Remember, you still have to deal with the headache of collecting payment even if you only run $100 worth of inventory.

Don’t brush over the nitty gritty. Read their agreement or IO. Find out what the payment terms are. Many times, they stipulate that you don’t get paid until they do by they advertiser. That can mean 90 days or more. Often they require the publisher to invoice them, which is another thing for your team to deal with. 

What’s the impact? Most importantly, what is the upside for you? Are you inserting additional generic display demand into an already cluttered ad stack, so that there is little upside to be made? Are you introducing a heavily intrusive unit onto an already overloaded page? As a publisher, your most important (and for many only) asset is your audience. Do not piss them off. Maintain focus on the long run and only try new units of monetization after careful analysis.

The next time you comb through your “contact us” inbox trying to decide what to respond to and what to delete, remember these rules. Select partners that are well known and trusted, force them to bring real value to you and hold them accountable.

Establishing rules to live by

Amazon is well known for having a published list of leadership principles. There are 13 of them and they are so well engrained into the culture that employees actually weave them into everyday conversation. I know this intimately, my wife having worked at Amazon for years. Initially my reaction was to scoff at such overt devotion, but on a week when the Amazon stock price surpassed $1,000 per share, I cannot help but appreciate what they have accomplished. To maintain that consistent vision in an organization with hundreds of thousands of employees is as impressive as their financial performance.

In contrast, I recently finished the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. It is about a dozen or so companies that chose to "be great instead of big.” Their founders made the decision to prioritize a different set of values ahead of growth. Some did this out of a desire to lead an exceptional life without undue stress. Others out of a fierce loyalty to their employees, customers and suppliers. Still others a drive to improve the community around them. Having spent a majority of my career working at growth-obsessed startups, I found myself reacting to these stories with a mix of appreciation and disbelief. After all, isn’t the life blood of capitalism continued and relentless growth (which is reinvested in capital projects, which creates jobs, which increases spending, which makes the world go round)? While we all want our companies to be successful, whether we own them or work for them, it is encouraging and important to recognize that success can take different forms.

As a small business owner myself and as someone who is always striving improve, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to clearly convey what we stand for. I want employees to live it, vendors and partners to appreciate it and most importantly for clients to feel it in their interactions with us every day.

Below is a list of principles that 360ops aims to live by. I don’t expect these to be final or to last forever, but if we can embrace them and act accordingly, we will be well positioned for continued success.

Client First

Put the publisher’s interest ahead of our own.

Take Ownership

Take extreme ownership of everything in our world, especially in stressful moments. Learn from mistakes and never make the same one twice.

Always Add Value

Add value for the publisher, either through increased yields or reduced costs. We must do this in order to remain in business.

Be Proactive

Anticipate the publisher’s needs and address them before they ask. They should never wonder what we are working on.

Take the Extra Step

Be obsessively thorough in every project and deliverable, going above and beyond the obvious.

The future of display

This will be part of an ongoing series about the future of the display advertising business for digital publishers.

We are fortunate enough to work with publishers across the business-model spectrum, from those that rely exclusively on programmatic to others that are deeply focused on native content creation to "freemium” or mixed publishers. The display advertising business model for publishers evolved as a way to translate the existing print or billboard formats to our computer screens. In order for anything to successfully be bought and sold in a truly scalable fashion, there needs to be a consistent unit of measurement. Within internet advertising, the banner ad is that unit.

Over time, dollars will flow to the top-end of the publisher spectrum for content creation and to the middle with audience data overlays. The bottom end long-tail publishers will continue to see downward price pressure as advertisers optimize toward higher-value channels. Now more than ever, context is relevant. If an advertiser can buy video ads at scale for an efficient price, but they run adjacent ISIS-promoting or racist videos, is it worth doing? The differentiating aspect of digital versus other forms of media is its measurability. Eventually, everything becomes independently trackable and measurable, and those platforms or publishers that refuse will lose out on significant opportunities.

For publishers, there are several key disciplines to focus on when it comes to monetization:

Context: the brand, the user-experience, the types of content created. The old adage that content is king has been challenged in recent years with the rise of social networks and the black hole of user-generated content, but premium brands still want to align with premium environments. Audience is important, but again if you deliver the right ad to the right person but its in an environment antithetical to the advertiser’s brand, it likely has a negative impact in the long run.

Audience: publishers with a specific audience will maintain an advantage in their sales strategy. A few examples would include VICE, which owns the millennial audience, any number of finance sites that attract affluent males or an organization like XO Group, which owns TheKnot (weddings), TheNest (newlyweds) and TheBump (pregnancy and parenting). These publishers have much less heavy lifting to do in proving the value of their audience to potential advertisers - it is apparent through the content they produce and backed up in ComScore. One approach is the VOX model where you have standalone brands with clearly defined identities. Another would be to create channels or franchises that live within (or are powered by) the parent brand but resonate with consumers on their own. Regardless of the specific strategy, creating content that serves the cravings of a particular audience with a unique voice and brand creates loyalty and ultimately leads to growth.

Data and optimization: it is rare for a publisher to have a functional, fully optimized data and reporting platform that captures all relevant metrics in real-time and presents them in a way that allows for strategic decision making. Often the publishers that are best at this are smaller, without direct sales teams, and have spent months or years optimizing their indirect ad stack because it makes up their entire revenue stream. We work with lots of companies in this category and if the top publishers approached their data in a similar way, they would have a distinct advantage.

Much has been written about the fact that nearly every new dollar flowing into digital is going to Facebook and Google, with little more than scraps left over for independent publishers. However, I believe that publishers that win at more than one of the above will be well positioned to capture an increasing share of the budgets flowing into digital media.