Over the next several days, we’re going to recap some of the key themes and takeaways from our 20th Publisher Forum in New Orleans last week. It was another ‘best yet’ event for us and with everything going on in the industry today, it could not have been better timed. A lot of ground was covered over a very short period of time and we’ll do our best to share what we learned over the course of the week.
This is not ‘The Perfect Storm’. It’s an image that is overused, too easily thrown around and when it comes to display advertising, it just doesn’t apply. While usage of the internet continues to grow and advertising remains the way most content providers generate revenue, ad operations teams are vital to the success of publishers. True, we are going through stormy weather, but we know that the reason companies send people to our events is because they are looking for ad operations leaders to help navigate through it.
Scotty gets his due. We started the conference with the concept that while Scotty from Star Trek did an incredible job keeping the ship going, “I’m giving it all she’s got” is no longer good enough. Like Scotty, Ad Operation leaders often need to fly into action to keep things in motion, but both would have a much greater impact if they were on the bridge helping direct where the company is going. Wouldn’t everyone be better off if we moved away from the continual emergencies and instead helped set a better course of action?
It’s all about Revenue. From Peter Naylor’s excellent keynote presentation through to our last breakout session, putting everything in terms of revenue was a major theme. Revenue is the universal language of business, and Ad Operations is becoming fluent. All of the sessions spoke not only of generating revenue, but in communicating to the rest of the company that revenue was the number one focus of Ad Operations.
Those are just a few of the overall themes of our Publisher Forum in New Orleans. We’ll continue to share more. If you were in New Orleans, and you’d like to share some of your thoughts, please let us know – we’d like to share your perspective!
Rob Beeler is Vice President of Content and Media for AdMonsters and has worked in Ad Operations for over ten years. Rob started attending AdMonster events in 2004 as a member and will be in New York on April 16th for Leadership Forum US VII
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