Rethinking Digital Ad Operations. To Keep In-House or Outsource?
Advertising Operations are one of the most critical roles for every Digital Publishing company. Such operations are peopled with experts in Ad Serving technology. They can support the sale and delivery of online advertising.
Ad Ops are involved in a great number of activities. From covering setup & campaign management to yield optimization, debugging, or trafficking. They have to cope with revolving demand, the maintaining of a reliable workflow, and campaign delivery.
Should You Build Your Own In-House Capabilities?
One trend we’ve noted recently has been the establishment of in-house Ad Operations among mid-sized and large Publishers. With an increasing number of 3rd-party intermediaries, more and more Publishers are looking to regain control over their Ad & Programmatic operations. This, however, means that they often find themselves confronting an array of new issues, since in-housing requires a great deal of internal expertise.
As Lynne d Johnson from AdMonsters points out, Ad Ops technicians should have a diverse skill set because they have to be both tactical and strategic—with a commensurate ability to enter data into a Google spreadsheet; as well as being able to make a presentation with the C Suite about how the latest privacy concerns might impact revenue. Given that Ad Ops and Optimisation team roles often overlap, with Ad Ops teams having to manage anything from yield optimization, pricing, vendor management to ad operations, they might require knowledge transfer across skill sets. The switch from the 2nd to 1st price auction model in Google Ad Manager, coupled with the introduction of unified pricing rules, has completely changed the Yield Management playbook.
Risks to Keeping Everything In-House
The most important step is to determine if existing Ad Ops or new hires have skills to match your needs. For some Publishers, building an internal team could mean higher costs. But are costs the biggest challenge? Let’s dive into all aspects related to building a new department.
Time
As stated by LinkedIn, 70% of companies need between 1 – 4 months to make a hire. Thus, creating an internal department and building a team takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, when talking about time, we need to consider the whole process. From the hiring of suitable candidates to training them in the essentials of ad operations. Another key factor we need to consider is on-boarding, training and learning to cooperate together. Some research states that an employee needs up to 2 years to fully integrate with a company.
Costs
Expenses related to the development of a new team might be a real game changer for your revenue. Very often Ad Ops can’t just work alone. They have to contend with repetitive and time-consuming tasks, which have to be carried out on a regular basis. Therefore, you need a team, or a specialist with an outsourced back-up team.
Assets needed
Establishing and expanding a new team will entail additional costs. Just as the possible renting of bigger office space, or the purchasing of tools and hardware. Capture and retention will also necessitate a consideration of perks as being part of the remuneration package.
Risks to Keeping (Almost) Everything Outsourced
For other Publishers, outsourcing Ad Ops to a partner who will take the time to understand their business and build a strong relationship with them is the optimal strategic choice. A trusted outsourced partner can offer a dedicated team of professionals working or closely cooperating with an in-house team. When considering an external partner, the boxes of communication, time management, quality, transparency and price all need to be ticked.
Strike a Balance
Being part of a publishing group, we at Yieldbird have helped numerous Publishers to support their in-house potential through a tailor-made training program based on our collective knowledge and experience, coupled with our insights with regard to best market practices. Many companies with large in-house teams want to focus more on strategic matters rather than executing campaigns or managing and migrating ad servers.
In fact, we have recently worked with a full-service communication agency – Step.dk. We helped them in establishing a full-stack team that immediately has started supporting STEP in their tasks, covering both standard jobs and advanced solutions.
On the other hand, other Publishers want to completely outsource ad trafficking and day-to-day campaign management so as to cut fixed costs & save time on hiring. We’ve also been approached by organizations looking for help in the building of their own in-house capabilities. Therefore, should you build your own in-house capabilities or outsource?
Final Thoughts
The right Ad Ops solution often boils down to the needs of a company. To answer the question whether you should build your own in-house capabilities or outsource ad operations, Publishers need to review their own requirements and consider the cost of recruiting, onboarding & training Ap Ops technicians over the managing everything in-house and having hands-on control of the process.
Although in-housing offers potential upsides, this process takes time and requires patience. It can put a crimp on your time and resources, and cause organizational disruption. While building in-house capabilities, you might still require a knowledge transfer or urgent assistance when unexpected situations arise.
Whichever option you choose for your company, we hope that we have provided you with some food for thought. We will be happy to provide you with in-housing consultation so as to help you decide which elements of your ad operations should be kept in-house, whilst offering to support you with the managing of your online Ad Operations.
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