By: Raymond Reid
Sunny with a chance of Clouds
In 2018 digital advertising in Canada will exceed $5.9 billion according to research from eMarketer. This spend forecast will represent approximately 40% of all advertising spend with television coming in a distant second at approximately $3.5 billion. This growth in digital, while slowing in percentage growth year over year, is still expected to grow significantly beyond 2018 as mobile becomes the dominant platform for spending.
There is however a fairly significant dark cloud hovering above this sunny future. The present digital advertising spend in Canada for 2015, forecasted to be $4.5 billion, and its future forecast is completely dependent upon a small, yet talented group of people, numbering less than 200 in total in Canada. In the US, with its 2015 digital advertising spend forecasted to be approximately $60 billion, this scenario is replicated exactly in that there is a similar small group of people, while a slightly larger group but still numbering fewer than 2,000 by recent estimates, that are responsible for achieving that markets forecast as well. Like their Canadian colleagues this group largely goes unnoticed and largely unrecognized for an industry that is wholly dependent up their grasp of the complexity that is digital advertising.
Who are these individuals that wield such command of digital advertising’s present and future? Well it’s important to say that these people do not occupy any of the normally visible roles that one might interact with when engaging in digital. They do not occupy any of the client facing roles similar to that of sales representatives or account executives. No, these are the people who are the backbone of digital, the one’s with the real skills and who actually know what they are talking about.
Digital Jedi’s
Commonly referred to as ‘Ad Ops Traffickers / Managers, Ad Ops Specialists, Ad Campaign Managers, and Ad Operations Coordinators among others, the individuals who fulfill the requirements of these roles are undoubtedly the smartest digital tacticians in the industry. They are the backbone of every major digital advertising agency, media publisher, trading desk, and media technology provider. Whatever their titles, they represent the key to whether or not a client’s digital advertising campaign achieves its targets, and at a more macro level whether or not the spend forecasts attributed to digital are ever realized.
Yet while these roles have become so important within the ecosystem of the digital advertising industry, they receive little recognition and more importantly little training. No single resource is more important to an advertisers success or lack thereof than these resources. According to a recent survey from Go2Hr, 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year. They cite the lack of skills training and development as the principal reason for moving on.
Accidents Happen
One of the reasons that the role of advertising operations professionals, the new nom de plume for ad ops people, has gone largely unnoticed and unrecognized is that the industry is still in a state of rapid evolution. The industry is growing and morphing at such a pace that there is no certainty that the roles existing today will be required in the future. Ad tech platforms and technologies are evolving so quickly that a role that exists today may be non-existent tomorrow. This is why I believe the role and significance of ad ops professionals has been overlooked. As an industry we have become so caught up in chasing the latest tech innovation that no one is paying attention to this critical group of individuals who are keeping the lights on while we go play with our new toys. It is to our disadvantage to ignore these individuals as without them the digital advertising industry comes to a halt. Period. Full Stop!
But unless you know about these individuals they generally work in obscurity inside agencies, publishers, and vendors alike. In fact if you were to ask anyone working in ad ops how they got into their jobs the overwhelming response would be ‘by accident’. It is a running joke within the ad ops community that no one goes looking for a job or career in ad ops. Advertising operations is a highly technical field of work that requires exhaustive repetition, is highly detailed oriented, requiring an affinity for math, and an ability to process volumes of information simultaneously…and quickly.
Ad ops professionals are the possessors of the critical knowledge about what the best strategies are to employ in digital across display, video, social, and mobile or any of the latest platforms. They represent the leading edge of what technologies add value (viewability, please!!), which audience segments respond to what kind of messaging, the best times of the day, evening, night to deploy a campaign, and the list goes on. The level of knowledge these individuals possess is truly impressive and if listened to would yield tremendous value to any brand, agency, or publisher attempting to learn how to better connect with consumers via digital.
Masters of Digital
The field of digital advertising is filled with almost limitless potential for career growth. A search of the word ‘Digital’ on any job site will result in pages after pages of employment opportunities in Search, Social, Programmatic, Display, Creative, among many others. As the industry grows in Canada from $4.5 billion in 2015 to over $5.9 billion in 2018 this will yield many more diverse roles to meet the needs of the various platforms, technologies, and requirements for delivering services to brands and consumers.
To meet the growing needs of the industry we will need to begin to leverage the collective knowledge of ad ops professionals. Their expertise is far too important to the present and future of digital for it to remain tucked away in the dark corners of today’s digital companies. A career in ad operations is not for the faint of heart, but whatever your area of interest in digital your career will be invaluably advanced should you spend a little time shadowing or performing the functions of an ad ops professional. In 2015 report from Adobe and Advertising Week called ‘Digital Distress: What Keeps Marketers up at Night’ reported that 76% of marketers think marketing has changed more in the past two years than the past 50 which has been largely been attributed to digital.
Today we see brands taking increasing control of their digital advertising by bringing digital in-house. I believe this is only the start of a trend that will see the path to brand marketing and management in the future have a requirement for digital training and expertise. In the same above-titled report it further states that 66% of marketers feel digital is critical to their company’s success and yet less than half feel highly proficient in digital marketing. Worse, only 9% of marketers feel they know their marketing is working. This requirement will place a need for greater digital literacy across the industry to match. Therefore it would be in yours and our collective best interests to start learning from the people at the forefront of digital or risk losing credibility with the advertisers we are all so dependent upon.
The Training Imperative
It is for this reason that the Digital AdLab has partnered with members of the advertising operations community to collaborate in the development of the ‘Digital Advertising Operations Program (DAOP)’s curriculum to both leverage the deep knowledge and insights these individuals possess but also to ensure that the digital literacy required today and in the future is taught by the people most qualified to do so. Digital advertising, whatever its form, will benefit and grow to meet the demands of the future only through greater collaboration with educational institutions, industry organizations, and the members of the adtech ecosystem. It is incumbent on us to leverage our greatest assets, our people.
If you would like to partner, collaborate, or support the Digital AdLab in this mission we would love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Founder, CEO – Digital AdLab
e; ray@digitaladlab.org