Barry John is currently Head of Advertising Operations for BBC Worldwide. He joined the BBC over a year ago, following an impressive, progressive career in the digital industry, including tenure as Head of Traffic for Virgin.net and NTLWorld.com and Head of Ad Operations for Virgin Media. Digital Mindshare caught up with Barry in the middle of a typically busy day. He spoke to us from his office in London.
DM: What does the ‘head of ad operations’ for a major global brand like BBC Worldwide actually do?
BJ: Good question! I manage a team who work with the sales execs to deliver out all the bookings for advertising across our websites. I also source technology that increases efficiency and add to our targeting and delivery capabilities. In my spare time, I improve the workflow that we use to manage the end to end booking and billing process; from the first time we have contact with a potential customer right through to the ensuring invoices are paid on schedule.
DM: How did you get into this industry?
BJ: I didn’t grow up wanting to be an ad operations person. I had finished university and did an internship at Virgin.net with the publishing team there, where I did some online production for their website. I did that for three months, and then moved to the Traffic Department as an opportunity appeared. From there, I progressed further in ad operations and traffic. The departments were quite small at the time, but they grew after NTLWorld.com bought Virgin.net, and the brand became bigger.
DM: Can you tell us what the term ‘ad operations’ means as it relates to digital marketing/advertising?
BJ: Ad ops (or Traffic in some organizations) people are the extension of the Digital sales team that delivers on what the sales execs sell. Ad ops work with sales to provide all the data that allows them to sell the ad inventory of a given site, providing details on what is available to book and when. This is harder than it sounds, as digital inventory is exceptionally fluid, and forecasting complex and somewhat of a dark art.
Ad ops ordinarily will take over once a deal is sold and set up the campaigns in the ad server (the technology used to place ads on the user’s web page). Checking the ad creatives are working on, and attaching them to the correct campaign is the daily workload of ad ops, along with monitoring during the life of the campaign and ensuring delivery is per the booking. Finally, the ad ops team reports at the end to the advertiser and to the finance team, to ensure that the correct billing occurs. This is part of the “housekeeping” duties that we as a department are responsible for.
DM: What’s your opinion about using ad networks to sell excess inventory?
BJ: I think they’re vital to the success of major publishers. They allow a publisher the flexibility to monetize every single impression, and to soak up major un-forecasted spikes in traffic that would have been for nothing without a network to monetize it.
They also allow the publisher to keep their CPMs (cost per thousand; in this case, one thousand impressions) at a premium to advertisers and agencies. If you drop your rates once – even in a last minute sale to fill inventory – you can never get them back again. By giving the inventory to a network, you can slice your inventory into two clear buckets: your premium CPM for your direct campaigns, and your low CPM with networks. There is no cannibalization this way.
DM: How do you go about measuring ad operations efficiency in your business?
BJ: This is particularly hard to do. However, I monitor the volume campaigns we as a department are managing in any given month. I also monitor the turnaround time by ad ops, from delivery of the signed booking form to the order being completed and set to go ‘live.’ Most importantly though, as this is a manual process, I monitor the error count across the team and aim to reduce this to zero. Attention to detail is of paramount importance. The entering an additional zero between 100,000 impressions and 1,000,000 is painfully easy to do, but the difference can cost us thousands of pounds [UK currency] in lost revenue.
DM: How are things different between US and UK in this industry?
From an ad operations perspective, the differences are in the detail. For example, here in the UK, for example, the publisher will invoice on their own stats, whereas in the US they invoice on the agency stats.
DM: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in this business?
BJ: In print and TV, invoicing and billing is done very straightforward and efficiently. However, but online has massive, complex issues; there is still not a universally accepted set of metrics that can be compared like-for-like. The print and TV market is mature. While metrics are not sophisticated, they are understood and accepted as industry ‘standards.’ There is not yet such a standard for online ad metrics.
DM: What advice would you have for students wanting to enter this industry?
BJ: I would say, really, just to get your foot in the door any way you can. As I mentioned previously, I did an unpaid internship for a short time, which led to 2-3 months of paid work, then a fulltime role. The digital market isn’t a mature industry with a mature career path; things change every month and every week. If you are there in the industry, you can change along with it, and grab opportunities as they arise. I would say just get “in” there – whether paid or not.
DM: Can you share your recipe for success?
BJ: I think, like most people, it is work hard, listen harder, and learn from what you can – from everyone and all who cross your path.