Staffing Models
The following staffing models are rough suggestions, as every publisher’s culture and requirement is different. One organization might have many sites each with minimal inventory, another might have a single site with a lot of inventory. An organization may have more focus on e-newsletter advertising, or site advertising, or mobile device advertising. An ad network or ad agency might be structured a little differently.
But no matter how you design your Ad Operations staff, keep a sharp eye on internal demand. If you’re an online publisher, you should not permit your Sales department to invent new sites, new e-newsletters with display ads in them, new web sizes and ad positions, and new buy types or targeting schemes without consulting Ad Operations to see if it can manage the increase of work without staffing up or automating further. All innovative sales ideas for earning new revenues must be evaluated against implementation and operational costs and resources as determined by the head of the Ad Operations staff, and senior members of other affected staffs. This must be enforced at the executive level and clearly communicated with cooperation from the head of Sales.
The below models are normal Ad Operations staffs which do not manage e-newsletter or list-rental production, web production, site traffic (Omniture, Google Analytics, etc), Flash development or creative development. To introduce those tasks into this department, you need additional hires with the appropriate skills. In a large organization, the staff can belong to a Media Operations department managed by a vice president who also oversees video advertising, mobile advertising, automation and site development, email development, Flash and Creative Designers, and so forth.
And don’t forget: Traffic managers are permitted to have vacations too! Every employee in this staff should have a functional backup. Never bottleneck workload through a single person who is the only one who knows how to do it. It places your business at risk.
Model 1: Sales staff of 2-3 with 5-10 new or revised monthly campaigns each, all Flat Fee (no impressions goals, no managed share of voice), all ROS, about 50% third-party delivered creatives. About 0-6 expiring house ads per quarter.
A. Director of Ad Operations
1. Traffic Manager
Model 2: Sales staff of 4-5 with 5-10 new or revised monthly campaigns each, over 90% Share of Voice (SOV), all ROS, about 80% third-party delivered creatives. About 0-12 expiring house ads per quarter.
A. Director of Ad Operations
1. Traffic Manager
2. Client Services Manager
Model 3: Sales staff of 5-6 with 5-10 new or revised monthly campaigns each, over 90% CPM advertising (impression goals), 50% or more on vertical targets, about 80% third-party delivered creatives. About 0-24 expiring house ads per quarter.
A. Director of Ad Operations
1. Traffic Manager
2. Client Services Manager
3. Another TM or CSM depending on balance of workload
4. Analyst
Model 4: Sales staff of 20-30 with 5-20 new or revised monthly campaigns each, some sites over 90% CPM advertising (impression goals), 50% or more on vertical targets, 50% or more on demographic or geographic targets, about 5-10% potentially on contextual targets, about 80% third-party delivered creatives. About 0-24 expiring house ads per quarter.
A. Senior Director of Ad Operations
1. Traffic Manager: Region 1 (or Site / Newsletter Group 1)
2. Traffic Manager: Region 2 (or Site / Newsletter Group 2)
3. Client Services Manager: pre-Sales
4. Client Services Manager: post-Sales
5. Delivery Analyst (availability forecasting, pacing reports, campaign completion reports)
6 Yield Analyst (yields, effective revenues, key performance indicators, comparative analysis)
Model 5: Sales staff of 30-40 with 5-20 new or revised monthly campaigns each, some sites over 90% CPM advertising (impression goals), some sites all Share of Voice, some sites 50% or more on vertical targets, some sites 50% or more on demographic or geographic targets, some sites about 5-10% on contextual targets, about 80% third-party delivered creatives throughout, about 10% Flash creatives (including some travelling or expanding ads), several interstitials per month, one or two microsites a quarter, any number of sponsorships or roadblocks a month on different sites (including display ads in e-newsletters). Two dozen expiring house ads per quarter.
A. Vice President of Ad Operations and Yields
1. Director of Ad Operations
a. Senior Traffic Manager
i. Traffic Manager: Group 1
ii. Traffic Manager: Group 2
iii. Traffic Manager: Group 3 (if needed)
b. Senior Analyst
i. Delivery Analyst (availability forecasting, pacing reports, campaign completion reports, client reports)
ii. Yield Analyst (yields, effective revenues, key performance indicators, comparative analysis)
2. Director of Client Services
a. Client Services Manager 1: pre-Sales
b. Client Services Manager 2: pre-Sales
c. Client Services Manager 1: post-Sales
d. Client Services Manager 2: post-Sales (if needed)
Editor’s note: This article is #5 in a 5 part series.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4