By Anastasiia Lushyna
Advertising operations can raise many questions because the term doesn’t come up very often in conversations about programmatic advertising. That’s why some people may be discouraged by this word combination. But don’t worry, you already know everything about it; you’ve just probably never thought about the terms and purposes of advertising operations.
In this article, we will examine what advertising operations are from a programmatic point of view and how they can maximize the performance of your ad exchange from Attekmi.
What is Ad Ops?
The Ad Operations department, commonly called Ad Ops, is the most important in the advertising industry and is responsible for managing and executing online advertising campaigns. Ad Ops teams work behind the scenes to ensure that online ads are accurately and effectively delivered and displayed to the target audience.
Key responsibilities of the Ad Ops team include ad traffic optimization, inventory management, campaign performance monitoring and reporting, and technical problem resolution. Ad Ops teams work closely with various stakeholders, including advertisers, publishers, and creative teams, to ensure campaigns run smoothly and achieve the desired results.
With the growth of programmatic advertising and the use of sophisticated advertising technology, Ad Ops’ work is becoming increasingly complex. It requires various skills, including technical expertise, data analysis, and project management. The role of Ad Ops is critical to ensuring ad campaigns run efficiently and effectively, providing maximum ROI for advertisers and publishers.
By the way, tracking the ad efficiency is impossible without eCPM (effective cost per mile) calculation. Learn about how to calculate eCPM.
What is Digital Ad Operations?
Digital Ad Operations, also known as Digital Ad Ops, is the process of managing and running digital advertising campaigns on various platforms such as websites, mobile apps, and social media.
Digital Ad Operations encompass several key aspects: ad trading, ad targeting, ad optimization, ad inventory management, ad creative management, reporting and analytics, and ad fraud prevention.
Overall, working with digital advertising is a complex and multifaceted process that requires expertise in various areas, including technology, data analysis, and project management, to ensure effective and efficient advertising campaigns.
At the same time, not every company can afford to maintain an in-house team to handle these complex operations. However, we are here to help – Attekmi offers outstaffing Ad Ops services, as well as AdTech and Ad Ops training services.
How to Improve Ad Exchange Efficiency with Digital Ad Ops
Digital Ad Ops is crucial in improving ad exchange efficiency by ensuring ad campaigns run efficiently and effectively. It is important that your ad operations team has all the tools it needs to maximize revenue from your advertising platform.
Monitor Server Workloads
The ad server is the core of the ad exchange, and it keeps things running smoothly: it organizes ad impressions and rendering, ensures delivery speed and ad consistency, and supports auctions, reports, and many other ad operations.
A well-managed ad server guarantees a stable ad exchange and flawless rendering of creatives. One of the most important tasks of your ad exchange is to ensure that the servers are running at all times.
For example, when the number of incoming QPS exceeds the limit on Attekmi’s ad exchange solution, the system automatically notifies the administrator so that they can prevent server overload and change the QPS plan.
In addition, our solutions are equipped with a QPS adapter, which allows you to properly distribute traffic and direct it to the right DSPs that need it most.
The QPS adapter allows you to match supply and demand more effectively as its sophisticated algorithms analyze inventory based on a list of targeting parameters such as traffic type, OS, device type, and minimum bid. After analyzing which traffic each DSP is most likely to bid on, it evaluates, generates “keys”, and prioritizes incoming traffic based on those keys.
Customize lntegrations
There is no denying that the OpenRTB 3.0 protocol makes it fast and easy to connect partners, but some SSP partners within your ad exchange may still require standard VAST to RTB integration.
In that case, handling this quickly enough with a technician who can set up custom partner integration and common endpoints for RTB partners is important. With the features of Attekmi’s solutions, administrators can do this quickly by using links to GET requests.
When the connection is established, the system will translate requests from the SSP into OpenRTB format and send them to the DSP. The responses will then be converted to VAST format and sent to the shared service providers.
Authorize Legitimate Sellers and Resellers
Advertising fraud is still a pressing problem in the advertising market. That’s why it’s very important not to forget about the tools that will minimize the risks associated with fraud. Ads.txt and sellers.json are common IAB standards issued to protect digital inventory from fraudsters.
For example, if your ad exchange has sells.json files available, ad managers can publish them for SSPs. The file will list all legitimate sellers and resellers of each shared service provider’s inventory. DSPs will have access to the file and easily discover who actually owns the requests. This will facilitate efficient and secure inventory management on your platform.
Our solutions support the generation of ads.txt and sellers.json files. Each time the platform receives a request from a publisher/SSP, it checks it against various criteria, which we’ve expanded to ensure that the traffic meets your requirements. We’ve also compiled a list of reasons why your platform might not send a valid request to a particular DSP. In the “Outbound Traffic Overview”, the system will display the number of requests not sent from a particular SSP to a particular DSP and the reasons why.
Make Your Traffic Safe
Providing high-quality traffic is vital if DSP partners are to seek it from your platform. Therefore, real-time traffic scanning should be integral to your advertising operations.
Scanning becomes easier with our pre- and post-bid scanners such as MediaTrust (TMT), ClearTrust (formerly Botman), and GeoEdge. Ad teams or advertising specialists can generate traffic in several ways. Attekmi solutions include a built-in traffic throttling system that tracks DSP responses to bids and determines the type of traffic each DSP bids on.
Adapt Traffic
Our proprietary traffic adapting mechanism is the system’s second most significant innovation. It enhances the system’s ability to match supply with demand, resulting in exceptional media-trading outcomes. This mechanism uses AI and ML algorithms to evaluate bids and direct traffic to the most needy demand partners.
This feature evaluates the requests and distributes traffic based on historical data on parameters such as traffic type, OS, device type, and bid floor. The traffic adapter prioritizes requests that have matching “keys” by recognizing the most frequently purchased inventory on DSP. Therefore, it sends each partner traffic that has a higher probability of acceptance.
Set Up Custom Filters
Setting up filters correctly is the most crucial aspect of advertising operations. Identifying the digital ad formats and campaigns that generate the most revenue is important to ensure a successful and seamless advertising operation. Attekmi’s solutions provide administrators with the ability to view statistics and explore the revenue generated by various formats such as banner, native, video, and others.
The platform offers handy dashboard statistics to compare revenue generated today with yesterday. This feature simplifies a valuable analytics operation for advertising. The dashboard also displays revenue distribution by format.
Analyze Your Ad Ops
On solutions from Attekmi, statistics are combined into one unit, so you can perform in-depth traffic analysis on your platform in a way that’s convenient for you.
Presets are structured reports that already contain certain metrics by default. They allow platform owners to get information quickly without creating new custom reports. Our system enables you to combine the metrics you want and customize reports to fit your platform’s needs.
In addition, we’ve offer multiple metrics and measurements to analyze your system’s performance. Among them: Fill Rate%, Render Rate%, Bid Rate%, SSP and DSP RCPM, Avg. SSP and DSP Bidfloor, Avg. SSP and DSP Bid Price. Basic statistics, request/response reports, and SSP/DSP statistics are now gathered in one place for your convenience.
Conclusions
Advertising operations are the most important part of your strategy, and it is best when professionals handle it. Keep in mind that, when needed, we can hire and train an Ad Ops professional specifically for your business.
If you still do not have an ad exchange but are thinking about it, you can contact us for advice. You don’t have to decide anything until you know all the nuances, and we will be happy to tell you all of those.
Looking for an effective ad exchange solution? Let’s talk.