Why Digital Media Operations Built Around Collaboration Should Be The New Norm

Have you ever witnessed a bad improv comedy performance? You would know immediately if you did. The jokes fall flat, the story doesn’t follow any kind of thread, and the audience is uncomfortably lifeless.

A good improv performance, though? It’s an exercise in a collective and powerful group mind.

The performers get a single word suggestion – sometimes maybe a location, too – and the scene unfolds. Sometimes the performance is short, sometimes long. What makes it work though, no matter the length, is the group on stage incorporating their individual POVs, creativity, and intelligence, and building a cohesive scene.

In improv, each individual brings something to the table and has a unique interpretation of what’s unfolding on stage – maybe one actor heard something another didn’t, or saw a facial expression that went unnoticed by others, or maybe the group picks up the slack when a fellow performer runs out of ideas, or can’t think of an idea or quip fast enough. The greatest performances happen when each person is working together and in sync. Because in most cases, two heads are better than one. There are other ideas out there that might be better than yours. And, yes, there are solutions you never even thought of.

But you have to set the proper stage for a mind-blowing collaborative performance. It usually doesn’t just happen on its own. Give people a place, a stage, a platform to collaborate, and the freedom to share ideas -- and watch the magic happen.

Modern-day technology and tools give us that place, and offers the ability to leverage many minds to address one issue or problem. Which begs the question: Are we successfully using these tools in the digital advertising space? Are we collaborating at all – let alone efficiently? It seems today that too many teams are isolated and left to their own devices to hunt down correct information and data. And, even worse, the data is spread out in a vast wasteland of disconnected systems – spreadsheets, Excel, Outlook, Google docs, Word docs, AdWords, DSPs, DMPs, and more.

Imagine the performance if we had the power of many to plan, negotiate, analyze and run digital media campaigns. In improv terms, the best show comes from the power of a collective group.

Which is why digital media businesses built around collaboration and shared learning opportunities needs to be the new norm.

By instituting a highly centralized and collaborative approach to campaign management, digital media teams can share internal and external communications, and campaign activity and context in one unified place – which bolsters performance and eliminates the blind spot of making assumptions.

Adopting collaborative thinking and software provides an opportunity to crowdsource everyone in the digital media ecosystem – buyers, sellers and everyone in between – to get up-to-date and accurate information about your accounts. Things like what worked, what didn’t, best optimizations, best rates and publisher information, historical campaign plans and media pricing, what ad units or creative proved most effective in the past, and post-launch pacing and performance.

Not to mention, crowdsourcing cuts down on mistakes, because there are more eyes looking at the same data in the same system. We’ve seen a 50% reduction in manual errors at Centro as a result of getting everyone on the platform.

Centro Platform is what collaboration looks like for your digital media teams.

Connect processes, teams, and systems with Centro Platform. Now everyone who touches the digital process operates with persistent and contextual communication.

Platform Features

Communications Center

The message center offers a transparent record of all the communication with sellers and team members, and it’s organized by campaign. And document sharing now comes with context, as you upload and share files in relation to communication streams and campaign changes.

Vendors share context and visibility through Centro Platform’s message center, activity feed, and views of shared proposals. Benefits of collaboration extend to working with publishers, and as a result, media plan development, negotiation, and completion is 29% faster using Centro Platform.

Dashboard Homepage

Centro Platform starts users with a dashboard based on their role. The dashboard provides a view of current workload status (new campaigns, campaigns going live, outstanding IO/RFP, campaigns ending, etc.) and an index of campaigns sorted by status, client, date, action required. An Activity Feed provides information about new activities since a user last logged in. If a user wants to search for a specific client or campaign, Centro Platform provides a universal search.

Alerts & Notifications
Teams start with an advantage, as notifications inform them of key actions on relevant projects – allowing them to immediately direct their attention as needed. Automated notifications keep users informed of new activities and pacing issues, allowing for faster campaign launch, issue resolution, and an ability to course-correct quickly.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email info@centro.net.