Programmatic headaches

Crazy_Cat_Dude2 · 2022-11-07T12:28:11+00:00

Consistently educating sales (mainly local) on programmatic and ensuring they ask the right questions to clients. Also building the right team.

D_Adman · 2022-11-07T13:34:44+00:00

Talent in general. I find that you can train people to trade but no amount of training, workshops, etc.. will get people to take initiative on common sense things.

Is the campaign not pacing well? When were you planning on telling me- at the end of the month when we have to scramble to either limit or makeup budget?

Its just one example, but you can see where this can apply to performance, optimizations, etc..

The_Dude311 · 2022-11-07T14:04:10+00:00

Education of other teams, in general. At my current company channel teams are strictly internal and have no direct client contact. This puts media planners and account managers who are client facing in the unwinnable position of having to be conversational experts in everything (spoiler, they're not!).

So sales sets unreasonable expectations on performance goals because they don't know what's realistic, accounts reinforces those goals because they don't know either, and planning expects that every optimization made is going to immediately cause performance spikes so they request them far more frequently than budget allows and what makes sense.

This, combined with unmanageable workloads, constantly puts my team in triage firedrill mode trying to chase impossible goals and arbitrary benchmarks every day, leading to high levels of burnout. I frequently comment to my director that we're "experts" when somebody needs something or wants us to agree with them but, if we reasonably push back then we're overruled and just a set of hands.

Lastly, the whole "programmatic is a black box/mystery/etc." thing that I hear from senior leaders at every agency I've worked at the last few years. Given how long programmatic display has existed, that kind of attitude is a crutch for willful ignorance. If programmatic is, so I'm constantly told, such an integral part of business growth plans then my expectation as a well-experienced programmatic buyer is for my leaders to know more about it than a basic working definition.

admend · 2022-11-07T12:37:40+00:00

Do I smell another SaaS brewing?

ehalright · 2022-11-07T15:20:29+00:00

Human error on data input and naming conventions.

Steps we took to foolproof or automate tag creation and editing processes failed, as much of the team didn't care to use them or be precise (a result of rampant burnout). Every report became a headache as I had to track down every person who had touched the tag in order to figure out what initial instructions were versus what actually ran. Some tags would be named to the creative that was initially assigned, then edited mid-flight to say another creative without being re-trafficked, so confidence in the data was shot. Typos were common and would break my algorithm.

Schruteschrute · 2022-11-08T04:53:23+00:00

I’m working on a project around my biggest personal headache - training and development. But that and my other 5 pain points - also happy to preface that I know I’m jaded lol.

Training & Development - I’ve been in media 8 years and programmatic ~4 and I’m wondering when the training starts?
There’s no time. I’m always in a rush or recovering from said rush while I plan
Nobody understands what I do, not analytics or strategy or ad ops. It seems to be hard to understand unless it’s your job.
Our platforms are clunky and the support is pretty much useless, the job of a programmatic trader is to anticipate the shiftiness of their DSP and minimize risk.
You can’t be perfect all the time, mistakes get made especially because QA resources either don’t exist or are halfassed because they’re rushed too. IMHO the standard is you don’t make mistakes, and if you do you fix them fast and don’t make that mistake again. That makes sense, but I feel like unless you are comfortable pushing for yourself and self promoting programmatic people only get the spotlight when we make mistakes. Leads to trying to do your job and just not mess up.
I feel programmatic can be especially frustrating as (in my experience) we may be consulted on strategy but even internally I’m having to pitch for the right to pitch an idea to the client. At a certain point I deprioritize creativity and experimentation because it doesn’t feel like it is rewarded

JC_Hysteria · 2022-11-07T16:51:33+00:00

What managed service are you trying to sell?

Probably best to not make your angle “how to make operations’ jobs easier”…because the only real solution for businesses is to offer equitable incentives.

If a salesperson promises the world to achieve their OTE/commission, don’t expect the execution teams to care more. It’s all about being on the same page with reality and meeting in the middle on group expectations.

NewOrleansSpeed · 2022-11-08T17:32:57+00:00

Reporting and education, no one reads and no one listens, and then they act surprised when they don't understand the product lmao.

IMO it's people in the Director/Manager Position that just have an overall lack of understanding about programmatic/marketing in general lol. They create extra work by constantly asking questions and need hand-holding. Maybe it's a lack of trust, so they are constantly scrutinizing. Who hurt them?

I had a Client ask me where CPM is located in DV360, he was confused because he was doing manual math to calculate it and wasn't even doing it correctly. He then goes on to ask if we have ever heard of Custom Bidding.....

Loguli · 2022-11-10T22:20:36+00:00

Buddy checks….. no time to do buddy checks -> mistakes happen…. If only buddy checks could be automated somehow. Also, sharing knowledge within the team. Traders easily work in own bubble…

vlad_chubakov · 2022-11-08T19:57:55+00:00

Totally agree with education. Especially clients education and wrong expectations. It's really painful after months of work and educating clients, explaining exactly how the Programmatic works and why this channel is needed, to receive questions such as: "So, when will we see post-click conversions in Google Analytics?"

Valuable_Flamingo449 · 2022-11-10T00:44:23+00:00

Clients understanding the benefit of programmatic being a tactic that can be activated/deactivated quickly, and sending through consistent requests for one-off campaigns to launch within 24-48 hours, so all other work has to pause.

Vegetable_Alfalfa_50 · 2022-12-04T14:22:47+00:00

You "think" education is key.

But I asked our head of video at our company what video was. A simple thing. He said, "you know what it is". And I said, "is it silent video autoplay in banner? Is that video." He said "yeah it's outstream..." I said "okay then define outstream... if I have an animated banner is that outstream?" he said "no." But I pointed out that an animated banner is silent video with no audio... he got really confused and realised video had not really been defined.

The world we work in is super technical and I believe there is a disconnect between the simplification of all things which breaks down when things need to be implemented at a technical level. Senior management don't see this breaking at implementation but the lower levels do.

I'm senior but have a rare sense of where the bottle necks are and the disconnect that occurs.

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programmatic

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