For managers and executives at media companies, the end of one year and beginning of another brings a host of requirements. Ensuring that campaigns deliver in full. Creating wrap up reports to showcase performance. Establishing budgets for the following year. Conducting annual employee reviews. The holidays bring a welcome respite for many people but it can also be a time of stress and uncertainty. Going into a new year goals are set and most employees come back with a renewed sense of energy. This is an opportunity to hit the ground running and set the business up for success.
For 360ops, as an advocate for publishers, it means doing more of the same while trying to improve our processes and focusing on getting off to a strong start for the year. It also means evaluating where each of our clients is and where we think they need to go. We evaluate their current partner mix to ensure they are working with the current best companies in the business. We look at areas of opportunity and establish a roadmap for the year, focusing on those priorities that have the potential to produce a step change in their business. We try to identify challenges they are expected to face - such as the “cookieless” environment in 2020 - and create action plans for dealing with them. We also align our own roadmap with that of our clients. The growing need for actionable data means we will continue to build bespoke dashboards that save time and allow for faster decision making. With budgets for PMP deals growing, we will ensure that each of our clients is prepared to maximize those opportunities as they come up.
It is all too easy to slip into the groove of a new year and before you know it Q1 is coming to a close. By this time it feels like it’s too late to set goals. While early is ideal, late is better than never. Ultimately, goals that have been translated to action plans and communicated with employees have the best chance of being reached. In the world of ad ops and media sales, most of us have far more work to get done than there are hours in the day so the challenge is to make time for those things that are important but not urgent. Projects that are going to make life easier for multiple team members or accelerate the business in an exponential way. It is difficult enough to prioritize thinking and strategizing, creating the headspace for managers and team leads to come together to brainstorm such transformative projects. Perhaps even more difficult, and equally as important, is the time allocated to turn these priorities into specific actions. For example, if creating new ad units and formats to be sold is identified as a potential game changer, someone needs to speak to sales about what is likely to resonate best, create mockups, establish pricing, work with product to implement in a test environment and prepare for the first deal. If these tasks are not assigned and do not have specific deadlines, it is possible that a project that could take a matter of weeks could drag on for the entire year.
Consider this a call to action for 2020. Create the time to identify the most impactful opportunities (typically this means blocking calendars and often must occur outside the office to minimize distraction). Assign owners to the outcomes and hold them responsible for following up. Give them the authority to make decisions and make things happen and establish a way to escalate and get answers quickly. Project management is almost always an overlooked and under appreciated function. Bring outside partners like consultants and vendors into the process early on. If you can do these things within your organization, you have done what you can to create the best chance for success.