Patricia Kill, Sales Support Director, News International, presented a session called Operations for the Future last week and OPS London. Patricia has been Director of News International Sales Support for the past three years, leading the strategic and operational development of both digital and print workflows, media planning and ad serving capability. We spoke with her about new opportunities for ad operations.
Q: How important is it that operations are ready to take on new opportunities?
This is one of the core deliverables, now more than ever. If being first to market counts for anything and let’s be clear – it counts for a great deal. If innovation and creativity are increasingly the norm then being able to mobilise an operation and indeed scale it is of ever increasing importance.
Q: One could argue that ‘traditional’ online advertising is far from efficient now. Shouldn’t we address those issues before taking on new challenges like mobile and video.
What would we be waiting for? I would certainly prefer greater efficiency in traditional online advertising. It’s amazingly paper heavy. A number of the efficiencies we could be applying to standard ad formats are agnostic, representing good business practices that protect margin, and enhance customer experience; advertiser and consumer. These should certainly be valued indeed harnessed. However, I certainly wouldn’t advocate stifling the new until we have sorted out the old. That is a sure way of being left behind.
Q: Platforms like the iPad and other tablets are so brand new – isn’t it going to take some experimentation with these new platforms to find out what works? Should operations lead that charge?
I think it’s more important than ever for operations to be in at the ground floor. Everyone wins when this happens. We are in a really exciting period of innovation, discovery and creativity. Operations thrives on finding solutions; problem solving and trouble shooting. These attributes are essentials to product development. Being able to apply this thinking early in road mapping product development reduces potential for rollback situations.
There is certainly a place and space for operations to show leadership. However, imposing rigid rules too soon can stifle creativity. Where we play an important role is providing clarity that ensure advertisers expectations are managed well. Experimentation for NI means engaging with advertisers differently – guiding the business through the transition from a development project in partnership with key advertisers into a scalable “off the shelf” product, along with bespoke solutions is certainly where I would expect operations to lead.
Q: Would you say that the operational issues that face publishers today are important enough that upper management teams should take the time to learn what ops is all about?
Absolutely, for many businesses operations is an afterthought. This isn’t unique to Digital. Perhaps as this is our newest medium it’s more obvious. Press, TV and Radio have had years to resolve the role of ops. If we are serious about scalable first to market solutions then senior management certainly need to invest in strategic leadership for ops shoulder-to-shoulder with revenue generation areas of the business. Successful ops teams see their contribution as both fulfilling campaigns and optimising opportunities. Much of that optimisation starts with the tools we use – this requires investment which drives a need for senior level engagement.
Patricia Kill, Sales Support Director, News International, presented a session called Operations for the Future last week and OPS London. Patricia has been Director of News International Sales Support for the past three years, leading the strategic and operational development of both digital and print workflows, media planning and ad serving capability. We spoke with her about new opportunities for ad operations.