You’re at the eye doctor for a check-up, and, as the technician adjusts the refractor and clicks between lenses, you’re asked to read the chart of letters on the wall. Are the letters clearer with option A or option B? What about option 1 or option 2? This continues until you’re able to clearly read the smallest line on the chart. A, Z, E, wait … is that a P or a B? More clicks and more questions.

Your best vision is achieved through a series of adjustments (unless you’ve been blessed with 20/10). Once you’ve found the right power lenses for your unique prescription, the results have a tremendous impact on your day-to-day life. No more headaches. No more squinting. Maybe less wrinkles? (OK, probably not). But, you can move through your day with greater clarity, control, and confidence.

What if we applied the simple principles of the vision chart to the more complicated parts of our work life? Wouldn’t it be incredible to constantly evaluate performance, look for blurry spots, and make tweaks and adjustments until things are just right? The problem is: There’s not enough time for this level of monitoring. After all, we barely make it to the eye doctor once a year, and now we’re talking about optimizing on a daily basis?

From where we’re standing in digital media, we cannot see the letters on the wall and we don’t have the vision to figure out a way to fix the problem. There’s too much to do. Too much clutter and chaos obstructing our view.

Ironically, an agency’s biggest value-add in today’s digital landscape is the degree to which they can optimize campaigns. But, with so many steps required to get from insight to action, many agencies are incapable of monitoring and enhancing campaign performance to the best of their abilities.

In a dream world, teams are able to quickly track whether performance is meeting client goals and, if it’s not, they’re able to make suggestions and revisions on the fly in order to stay on track with campaign KPIs.

But today’s digital media world is not that simple. The complexity of digital media, combined with all the moving parts necessary to set up a campaign (all the while using inefficient tools and systems that slow down the day-to-day), adds up to agencies not having the means to efficiently plan and create campaigns. And, not to mention, once campaigns are live, performances needs to meet client expectations. But, using today’s tools, digital media teams don’t have the means or the time available to monitor or report on what is and isn’t working in real-time.

All of this takes a toll, and can lead to a number of potential issues across the entire lifecycle of campaign planning.

For instance, sometimes campaigns are set up incorrectly. Teams are using multiple systems – Excel, email, internal campaign tools, you name it. Or different people worked on prior campaign executions and sometimes access to historical data is not readily available.

Or maybe the campaign isn’t launched at the right time and doesn’t go live.

And typically it takes forever to pull the necessary reporting and data. Many external agencies don’t have access to IO and planning data across all of their campaigns, clients or even vendors. When it comes to campaign analysis, agency teams are logging into multiple systems – ad servers and third-party data platforms for their delivery data, or Excel and Prisma for contracted data – and it’s a time suck to match client goals in one system to campaign performance in another system. Perhaps the campaign is time-sensitive and has a small flight window, and it’s critical to understand what’s happening in real-time.

But, with Centro Platform, each piece of data you need to run a smart and successful digital media business is available on demand.

Centro Platform is what optimization for your media teams looks like.

With Centro Platform, you radically improve the productivity of your team and your operations. Information is available daily on the platform, meaning there’s a 36% increase in time spent on monitoring and reporting on campaigns – so there can be a stronger focus on hitting KPIs and delivering on what clients expect.

Platform Features

Centro Insights
Insights is a customizable report builder in Centro Platform, with drag & drop functionally and visualizations, that provides an agency-wide view across campaigns. Centro Insights enables media teams to quickly pull reporting and data into pivot tablets, allowing them to uncover what’s working and what’s not and make informed business-level decisions.

Campaign Performance & Analytics
Centro Platform provides a rich view of delivery performance against a campaign contract to show pacing, CTR, and many additional metrics updated daily. Extract data and pull reports and analytics out of the platform for additional sharing and evaluation. Alerts and notifications call attention to issues on delivery or performance. Resolve these issues quickly by using the message center to contact your seller or return to the planning grid to revise the contract and issue an updated insertion order. Need to fix an inaccuracy? Adjustments update an ordered campaign with corrected delivery details to accurately record and account for mistakes.

Centro Platform brings data to one unified view and enables optimizations or revisions to occur in the same system as planning, execution, and reconciliation. With a deeper understanding of your campaigns, you can optimize toward KPIs, and, ultimately, put more money toward working media.

Client Approval & Insertion Orders (IOs)
Centro Platform automates the process of creating IOs and storing those contracts in the system for reference, tracking and revisions. The platform keeps the order process as straightforward and clear as possible, and you’re able to optimize and revise campaigns smoothly by looking at data delivery against contracted line items and shift budget to reach your KPIs.

Data Integrations
Centro Platform is integrated with ad servers DCM and Sizmek, plus integrations with Facebook and Google, to help you launch and optimize your campaigns quickly. And regardless of the third party tracking you’re using, Centro Platform makes it possible to align delivery and performance data against the contracted information.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

 

Centro kicked off its internship program last summer in Chicago with 15 interns – or Centerns, as they’re called. This past summer, Centro expanded its internship program to include regional offices. Of those 12 interns spread across our regional offices, 7 were hired on full-time.

We talked to two of those former Centerns about their internship experience, and how it prepared them for their current full-time roles.

Caroline Green, Associate Programmatic Buyer – Dallas

I graduated from Auburn University in May 2016 with a degree in marketing and finance. As I got closer to graduation, I was interviewing with different companies and unsure of what exactly I wanted to do, but I was very intrigued by the digital industry. I knew that I loved the creativity involved with advertising, but with a background in finance, I wanted to combine creativity with strategy and analytics. And someone told me about Centro. I’m from Dallas originally, so I moved back after college to work as a programmatic intern for Centro.

I learned so much about the programmatic industry during my internship – and I had barely any understanding of what programmatic was before. During my internship, I spent most of my time getting trained from current associates and buyers – which helped prepare me for my current role. They taught me how to bid on advertising spots, how to keep a campaign on track to spend in full and perform, and how to use all of Centro’s software.

I’m now an Associate Programmatic Buyer in Dallas. I would be lost without the knowledge I gained during my internship. It’s a little bit different now that I have my own accounts to “pace” (track spending), but I’m in a pod with three people, and it’s very nice to have others to lean on while I still have questions. I continue to learn more and more things every day that help me do my job.

My advice to a prospective intern would be: Definitely be willing to learn, and don’t get discouraged when things seem overwhelming or unfamiliar. I’ve never asked so many questions in my life, but everyone was willing to answer them, and it paid off to learn so much!

Emma Tapper, Associate Programmatic Buyer – Chicago

I am originally from Chicago, but I attended University of Wisconsin-Madison where I majored in journalism and minored in digital studies – and studied abroad in Cape Town!

After graduating in May, I was lucky enough to intern at Centro’s Chicago office as a Brand Exchange intern. I worked with both the supply and demand side on a day-to-day basis. I am still on the Brand Exchange team, but now I’m an Associate Programmatic Buyer.

My current role differs from the intern work I did during the summer, but the internship fully prepared me. Throughout the summer, we had different meetings with various departments, which helped all the interns understand how Centro operates and why each department is so important. And the atmosphere at Centro is absolutely amazing. I don’t know a single person who has had a comparable internship experience to mine. I would tell a prospective Centern to get to people at the entire company and in different departments – not just the team they work with day-to-day.

If you have more questions about our internship program or would like to apply to be a part of the program, please reach out to [email protected].

Think of the people who demonstrate a high interest in products and services without pulling the trigger – the shoppers who abandon a cart full of goods before checking out, or browse high-end phones without signing up for a contract. This type of behavior has made remarketing a backbone for any digital strategy. And demand side platforms (DSPs) finally allowed for marketers to scale remarketing across a vast range of inventory sources, without sacrificing transparency and control to a network.

But, programmatic is capable of so much more than just remarketing. DSPs have opened up access to a wealth of targeting options and formats that can be served anywhere at any time. Make sure you are taking full advantage of all opportunities a DSP can offer.

Contextual 

Contextual targeting is an excellent way to expand outside remarketing, and has become much more sophisticated. You no longer have to hand select sites and apps individually to build a channel. Content is analyzed and sold on the page-level, ensuring the highest relevancy and the most reach. DSPs give you flexibility to buy and optimize at will with full insight into where the ads are delivered.

Audience

Audience targeting is a great complement to help build awareness and remarketing pools. Audience relies on many aggregated signals from online and offline behavior. There are dozens of providers with tens of thousands of targeting segments ranging from in-market, demographic, interest, and more. In a DSP you can easily research and match these audiences to your customer profiles or the products being advertised.

Mobile and Video

Even experienced remarketers may overlook additional digital formats and limit campaigns to desktop display. As user behavior dramatically shifts channels, including mobile and video is especially important. By only being on desktop, you might miss a portion of your target entirely.

Mobile and video have other targeting options and benefits to consider. Hyperlocal and geo location let you reach consumers who might be near one of your stores or about to visit a competitor. Audiences can be built off more than one parameter as well. People who have shopped at sporting goods stores and traveled to ski resorts can be classified as outdoor enthusiasts. Video campaigns add an interesting layer with the ability to remarket off completion rate. Watching a full ad is another solid signal of interest to leverage.

Remarketing is a great entry point to digital advertising and programmatic. If you’re not thinking beyond a single targeting tactic or inventory source, you’re missing out on opportunities to engage with customers and have a complete marketing strategy.

To learn more about how Centro DSP can help activate new tactics, visit centro.net.

The vast amount of manual work required to plan digital media campaigns today, even in the programmatic space, is almost too hard to comprehend. All told, there are roughly 70 manual steps.

The worst part?

Most of the work is still done in Excel and Outlook, regardless of whether agencies are pitching a large, innovative new campaign or renewing a familiar, quarterly execution.

Manually keying in data, switching contexts to source information, and an overall absence of structured or guided workflow all significantly slow the process down. Additionally, employees at agencies tend to rotate between clients as needs change, creating inconsistencies across teams. The lack of control, paired with the staggering amount of manual work, results in erratic delivery to clients, and often scares agencies into a smaller circle of partners and executions – limiting their abilities and talent.

Snapshot: There’s so much work and manual effort in planning a campaign that it can inhibit an agency from branching out, both creatively and strategically. It’s easier to work with the same partners, time after time, but this restricts the agency’s ability to build the best plan possible and could potentially make them a less appealing partner to clients.

Real Concerns from Real Digital Media Professionals
From a media team’s perspective, strategists, planners, and buyers need to continuously evaluate and work with new partners, and provide clients with a strategically-sound plan. Pain points for this team include a time-consuming process, resulting in lackluster campaigns that are not as strategic, thoughtful, or unique. Media teams also struggle with the inability to easily share information in order to plan better in the future.

It’s often hard to find the time or the resources with the amount of manual effort required when planning a campaign. Assessing partnerships without a template means varied responses from publishers, making it tough to compare and contrast. Additionally, there’s little time and limited resources to meet with and understand new or unique partnerships, so teams often default to a standard set of vendors (typically at an agency these are Google, Facebook, a DSP, and some endemic sellers).

The Solution: Centro Platform
Centro Platform automates many of the manual tasks of planning so that you can focus more on strategy and less on inputting data into Excel. Feel a sense of freedom and empowerment knowing that all your work is in one place, that the system will alert you to items needing attention and will ensure that you receive all necessary information before proceeding. With a rich database of sellers and contacts, new opportunities are a simple RFP away and can easily be compared/contrasted with competing partners to be sure you get what you want.

This is what digital media planning in 2016 looks like. This is Centro Platform.

Platform Features:

RFP Automation

• Streamlined operations begin with Centro Platform’s planning grid – offering users edit modes and the ability to export/download. It also reduces the need to manually re-enter information.
• Centro Platform’s dashboard offers a personalized view of projects and notes, with simple navigation to keep teams on track. Once complete, campaigns can be archived – which keeps your dashboard clean and your sellers informed.
• Alerts and notifications make for a dynamic to-do list that keeps buyers and sellers collaborating.
• Start the RFP process faster and reduce manual data entry by using Centro Platform’s ability to copy campaigns and plans for simplified renewals or replication.
• RFPs are more uniform and reach sellers faster with Centro Platform. Contact many sellers at once or create custom streams of review depending on client need. Automatic updates on status keeps everyone informed.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

Back in 2015, we conducted a workplace satisfaction survey with Digiday. What did it tell us? That workplace satisfaction and happiness is a growing concern for the industry, and nearly half of digital media employees are ready to switch jobs within the next year.

A recent survey from Campaign only confirms our research. The report, coming out a year later, found that nearly half of digital media employees say they suffer from low morale, and 63% of those are actively searching for a new job.

Head over to Campaign to read more.

Ever been house hunting and walked through a professionally staged home? You’d know one if you saw it. Every element inside is perfectly curated and placed– even the mudroom lacks the messiness and disarray you’d expect. Everything is organized. You’re able to see how each item in every room works together and flows seamlessly into the next – contributing and enhancing the overall value of the entire space. Paint colors, couches, accent tables, even tiny throw pillows play an important role in convincing you this is home.

Now, compare that to your own space. Most us don’t live like Martha Stewart -- so home is disorganized. Cluttered. Filled with the mess of everyday life. lt’s nearly impossible to find the time to step back and decipher what works, what doesn’t, what looks good, and what should have been thrown out 30 years ago. You can’t wrap your head around the enormous effort required to get from the chaos to command, so instead you buy another wicker basket, even though you have 23 already, and you’re not sure it’ll work, but it’s a quick fix – another way to hide the mounting mess.

As unrelated as it may seem, the digital media industry feels a lot like a house that hasn’t been staged. The digital landscape is cluttered and complex. And, combined with the different and disconnected systems we use in our everyday jobs, agencies haven’t found a controlled and effective way to do digital.

As the chaos in the industry continues to grow, details fall through the cracks, there’s little visibility into what is and isn’t working, work is rife with error, clean data and complete, end-to-end processes are difficult to come by, and people at every level of an agency clamor for the opportunity to be more of a strategic partner for their clients.

Chances are, your digital media operations ‘house’ is out of order and it’s time to take back control.

A great example of this chaos uncontrolled: Last summer, Morgan Stanley estimated there was about $26 billion in ad spending under agency review – from big marketers such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, McDonald’s and Johnson & Johnson. Not only was this deemed unusual from a financial standpoint – that $26 billion total is more than the combined amount under review over the last three years – but it used to be rare for a marketer to put their business up for review, and now it’s become commonplace. As the traditional AOR business model goes by the wayside, marketers are beginning to pull the plug quicker on agency relationships and look to specialist agencies to handle smaller portions of their ad business.

Part of the reason for this? Agencies lack control, and don’t have a single system of record or platform that’s capable of running all these pieces of business and keeping it under control.

And that feeling of frustration from the lack of control can be felt at every level.

Media teams, responsible for planning and executing campaigns, are faced with too much grunt work and time-consuming manual tasks in order to get from point A to point B. They’ve got little time left to do the thoughtful work for their clients – making sure campaign plans are meeting client goals, analyzing campaign performance and data to decide what to do more of, what to do less of, and what to do next. They’re often left with no time to explore new partnerships – meaning they tend to work with the same 4-5 partners on rotation, which looks unappealing to clients and can result in lower quality insights and strategic work.

CEOs and CFOs, tasked with running and growing the business, lack visibility into the day-to-day operations of the business, and are often correcting the symptom; not the problem. They need to understand where to make a profit, what’s not working and how it can be fixed, who the right customers are, and when and where to hire. But, often facing information that’s inaccurate, there’s less opportunity for them to take control of the strategic and financial decisions the business requires.

Centro Platform is what control at a digital advertising agency looks like.

Centro Platform creates a series of automated checks and balances at every step of digital media operations management – from campaign conception to completion – empowering agencies and enabling them to gain operational control in one single platform.

With visibility at every layer of your digital media operations, you gain peace of mind knowing your teams are properly equipped, making decisions with context and confidence. Deep insights or a quick peek under the hood of your digital media ops whenever you want puts you in full and complete control – every step of the way. Feels like this could be home, doesn’t it?

Platform Features

Roles & Permissions
Bring structure to your teams and keep your data clean. Centro Platform offers the ability for team leadership to assign roles and set permissions, ensuring team members only perform actions for which they are allowed. And you’re able to support the privacy and effectiveness needed for your client, through assignment of users to a client/brand – resulting in a more focused product experience. This empowers team members to execute and track campaigns correctly from end-to-end, reducing time spent on setup – as well as costly errors – by 20% overall.

RFP Automation Feature
Digital media changes rapidly and it can be a challenge to get all the information you need. Centro Platform provides the framework to capture the who, what, where, when, and how of an ad being purchased and served – in a cleanly formatted and timely manner. Centro Platform generates RFPs for vendors, and welcomes them into using the system. As proposals are submitted, you can compare and contrast to see changes and revisions, ensuring all teams have the information they need.

Automate, document and store every step of the digital media buying process, so you have better leverage with publishers and greater transparency with clients.

Vendor Negotiation
With Centro Platform, both buyers and sellers use a single system to communicate and negotiate placements. With the platform, multiple plan versions can be created with different budgets or media mixes, based on changes from vendors and the needs of your client.

Never lose track of negotiation again, because all submissions and responses are stored for review. Assign appropriate media team members to your plan for them to see rates, communication, and tactic options.

Client Approval & IOs
Centro Platform automates the process of creating IOs and storing those contracts in the system for reference. Infuse organization into your client orders and subsequent vendor orders. Control and optimize campaigns smoothly – see data delivery against contracted line items and shift budget to reach your KPIs. Issue digital orders to vendor partners for speedy approval and implementation.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

 

Viewability has remained a hot topic for publishers, agencies, and marketers alike. The debates around measurement standards, challenges with mobile and video, and transaction models tend to dominate the conversation. Advertising campaigns cannot simply pause and wait for consensus while the issues are being sorted through, and campaign managers desperately need practical tactics to optimize campaigns and achieve viewability goals in the meantime.

With Centro DSP, we have the benefit of looking at data at a macro level, and our operations team noticed some interesting points while examining targeting and viewability results.

Let’s take a look:

1. According to measurement data from our partner Pixalate, campaigns targeting high and top-tier settings (from comScore vCE and Peer39) generated 3-4 times higher viewability percentages compared to low and bottom tier settings. While that might seem like common sense to the average marketer, seasoned users of DSPs have come to learn that expected outcomes are not always so reliable.
2. Invalid traffic can increase on campaigns with high viewability percentages. So, bots can in fact be viewable. Also, since viewable impressions are more valuable, there is added incentive for bad behavior. Luckily, Centro DSP has robust fraud protection in place to filter out those sources on your behalf.
3. Above the fold (ATF) inventory, one of the classic targeting strategies for viewability campaigns, is not guaranteed viewable, but the correlation between ATF and viewability is tenuous when you analyze the numbers. How is that possible? Remember: Viewability is not only pixels in view, but also time spent. A 728x90 ad at the top of a web page may be scrolled past instantly, or perhaps ads in a photo stream don’t have an opportunity to load before the next click.
4. Don’t discount below the fold (BTF) inventory. Many publishers have implemented lazy loading or sticky placements to ensure ads have an opportunity to be seen.
5. Monitor viewability by domain as well as ad size. Performance can vary wildly on the same site depending on the ad unit. As with any programmatic campaign, keeping a close eye on reporting in every dimension is key.

Viewability is a challenge for buyers and sellers. Don’t just take our advice. Test, learn and let the data drive your decisions.

For more information on DSP technology or on Centro DSP, visit our website.

The digital media landscape is ever-evolving. New vendors, unique executions, and changing client goals makes it difficult for agencies to find the best approach when committing resources and structuring teams.

Even after those teams are built, there are a number of disconnected products and systems used to get campaigns from point A (research) to point B (billing). As the ecosystem expands and contracts, these legacy systems aren’t built to keep pace. The result: inefficient and inconsistent processes that are far too error-prone. Agencies are forced to figure out a way to align teams with new executions and old tools, and often struggle to make all of the pieces fit.

Snapshot: Too many disconnected, outdated systems make digital media operations slow and inefficient. The lack of workflow results in details falling through the cracks and a generally poor and confusing experience for planners, buyers, analysts, finance teams -- and even worse -- clients.

Real Concerns from Real Digital Media Professionals
Let’s look at this issue from a Media Team Director/Lead POV. For this role, to get from conception to completion of a digital media campaign, productivity is top of mind -- and there’s lots of room for improvement. Since this team tends to use at least 5 different systems to research, communicate internally and externally, evaluate campaigns, order IOs, and bill clients, the process is not as streamlined as it should be. When large-scale campaigns or highly innovative executions come down the pike, processes are adjusted so that the team can work within the systems provided – many of which are not built for digital. This constantly changing approach leaves the team with gaps in data and information, which leads to too many mistakes. It would be ideal if there was a way to be more organized and work in a flexible, connected platform. This would greatly reduce the daily stress on the team and make their effectiveness easier to evaluate.

The Solution: Centro Platform
A streamlined, holistic approach to digital media operations, Centro Platform is software that connects teams, so they no longer work in silos. Centro Platform allows you to centralize team members and selling partners into one system so that people, processes, and performance all exist in one place. Now you have a single system of record within the agency, providing an audit trail of all documents, plans, proposals, and communications. Your internal teams and sellers can easily collaborate, and communication is organized by campaign for reference. Information is easily accessed and shared so teams stay aligned and in-the-know. Centro Platform rapidly releases updates to ensure that it grows with the industry and with your business.

This is what organized digital media operations looks like. This is Centro Platform.

Platform Features

Vendor Relationship Management

• Centro Platform’s Vendor Directory consolidates over 4,500 vendors, 9,000 properties, and 11,000 unique contacts. The database includes comScore integration, accelerating the process from research to RFP.

Communication Center

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

Alerts & Notifications

• Automated notifications keep collaborators informed of new activities, allowing for faster campaign launch, issue resolution, as well as receipt of payments.
• A system smart enough to sense projected loss, Centro Platform alerts users on pacing issues. When delivery is below or above stated thresholds, or if there is an issue at launch, Centro Platform updates the team so you can course correct quickly.
• Teams starts with an advantage, as notifications inform them of key actions on relevant projects – allowing them to immediately direct their attention as needed.

Roles & Permissions

• Centro Platform accounts for the flexibility of your business by offering several sets of permissions. With one or many permission sets assigned, you will be able to layer access restrictions accordingly. Select from 11 permission sets to create the most productive and healthy environment for your team, clients, and sellers.
• Offering a structured approach to permissions, Centro Platform helps focus cross-functional team members on their areas of expertise – ensuring they only perform actions for which they are allowed.
• Users qualify as either Super User, Agency Admin, Agency User, or Vendor User, and can be further assigned to a client or brand if appropriate.

Platform Security

• To ensure we are providing best-in-class security, Centro has partnered with a leading business security audit company to conduct periodic security audits.
• Centro Platform’s Data Center is compliant with the highest hosting standards. Network access to the database is guarded by our firewalls, as well as a key system with high levels of encryption.

To learn more about Centro Platform or request a demo, visit centro.net or email [email protected].

 

Location, location, location.

It may be a cliché, but digital marketers only want to deliver ads in markets where their products and services are available – making the geographic location of a customer incredibly important.

National campaigns may seem straightforward, but how a campaign performs throughout the country is unpredictable. This makes deciding how to allocate and manage budget across different regions a major challenge.

But one of the benefits to buying media programmatically via a DSP is that marketers no longer need to guess. Adjustments can be made in real-time to direct budget to the locations that are most effective.

Centro DSP has always offered best-in-class geographic targeting and hyperlocal capabilities, and now we are pleased to introduce reporting by geography as an added feature. Geo Reports give views into campaign metrics at the country, region, and city level.

Because local markets no longer need to be set up separately to gain insight, the ability to analyze the geographic distribution of spend, impressions, and conversions makes campaign management more efficient and will free up time for optimization. By monitoring geo reports, you can find unexpected pockets of performance and prevent waste in areas that are not as responsive.

Over the coming months, we will be introducing even more metrics with DMA and postal code reporting. To access Geo Reports, simply go to the Reports tab, select Geo Report, and choose the Dimensions.