Following another month of record revenues, we chatted with Planet Sport Group's Head of Revenue Operations, Angie Singh, about how to excel in programmatic ad revenue by leveraging strategic partnerships, data monitoring, and swift data-driven decision-making.
Angie, Planet Sport Group enjoyed an incredibly strong November and December, posting record revenues in both months. Talk to us about why this is.
November falls into part of Q4, which traditionally has always been strong; December used to be the strongest month, but I think over the past few years we've noticed Black Friday, which falls in November, starting to take over a little bit from where the traditional Christmas budgets would have been spent.
That's one of the reasons why November traditionally sees strong revenue performance, and why I feel we've done extra well in November. Part of our responsibility is making sure we're fully optimised, taking full advantage of this time of year since Q4, yearly, is when we can make the most of our revenue.
When I say fully optimised, we want to make sure we're working with the right partners. One of the exercises we do before Q4 is removing all the dead weight, ensuring we're only working with partners that will give us strong performance.
Part of my role is speaking to these partners very regularly to make sure that there's no technical problems and that we're technically mapped, allowing them to see all the opportunities. Besides that, making sure that we're speaking with our internal tech teams and monitoring our KPIs to ensure that whatever the buyers are seeing is good, premium, high-quality inventory.
What are important parts of your daily activity and workflow that are especially important in the run-up to the Q4 period?
It’s about continuously looking at the data on a daily basis, making sure that we're fully optimised. When I say look at the data, we're looking at ads per page, availability, and we're looking at the RPMs.
We're not only looking at things from a holistic, higher-level view but also checking each individual buyer that we have plugged into the system to make sure they’re all performing as forecasted.
At the end of the day, we're dealing with technology, and things break, things fluctuate, and the only real way of ensuring that we're picking things up amidst that is looking at the data. This means I make sure that my day-to-day involves speaking to buyers and speaking to tech whilst looking over data.
What kind of conversations do you have with buyers and clients to ensure that our optimisation process is running as smoothly as possible?
One of the things we check is that they have access to everything that they need, since demand for our inventory obviously varies month on month. In parallel to that, on the buyer's side, their strategies are continually changing as well. What may have worked for them last year may not work this year.
We're continually speaking to our clients to make sure that they're getting access to whatever they might need. I spoke to a buyer recently who wanted access to another piece of our inventory and a new format in the run up to Q4. We got them on board really quickly, again, to make sure that we're allowing maximum opportunity to monetise this period.
You mentioned changing your approach strategy. Could you expand on how you've had to evolve your strategies in the business sense?
We're very fluid when it comes to how we work. With ads per page, for example, when demand is high, we try to optimise the number of ads per page, but when we’re reaching a period like January, or in fact probably the back end of December, we’re aware that demand is going to start withering away.
One of the things we've been speaking about is: do we need that many ads on the page? Sometimes we need to change things up a little bit and reduce things; if we send too many requests for an ad into the marketplace and there's simply no demand, say in January, that means we need to adjust our optimisation strategy.
This means looking at the ads per page view on a quarterly basis rather than settling on 'this is it, this is how many ads we have on the page, and this is how it'll stay forever.'
Recently, we did an exercise where we changed up the way that the ads were loading on the page. But again, we look back at the data, and if something's not working, we'll roll it back, so nothing is permanent. Instead, we’re continually monitoring and changing things as it's needed.
The Ad Ops team works closely with our editorial teams. Just how important are teamwork and communication in the ad operations process?
It's absolutely critical we all collaborate and work in harmony with each other.
We're super lucky at Planet Sport since we've got a publishing team and editors that understand the commercial value that we bring to the table. Simply put, it cannot work any other way, the teams must work hand in hand.
The editorial content is important, since obviously we need people on the site to read the content. Otherwise the ads are meaningless since there would be no one coming to read the content, meaning we can't make revenue. Both the existing quality content and the number of page views we get, which is what the publishing team specialise in, are critical to our success.
Regarding the struggles of the wider publishing industry, are there any strategies that you've applied to keep Planet Sport trending upward?
We can't comment too much on what others are doing or seeing, but based on my own personal experience having worked at other businesses in the past, I think one of the biggest advantages Planet Sport has is how quickly we can move and change things when necessary.
If something's not working, we can change it. We don't have a lot of red tape and hierarchy of senior management to go through, and I think that’s the biggest key to success for Planet Sport; it’s just how quickly we can get things done.
It’s also the respect I think everyone has for each other. You could speak to Barrie [CEO] and say, 'look, this is not working' and that’s fine as long as you're giving the justifications and the rationale behind your decisions, because everything is data-backed and you've got the evidence.
Here you've got the autonomy to just look after your area and see how you can fix things, whereas in other businesses, from my own personal experience, it can take up to six, seven, or even eight months to get a small change through, meanwhile you're losing revenue.
The world doesn't wait around for you, does it? So, you can't afford to be left behind, you've got to be going at speed. Things change quickly, and we are super lucky to have a team that can react very quickly as well.
Calling on your 20 year's experience in the advertising operations industry, what's your advice that will increase business efficiency and yield better results?
Always look at what the data is telling you and act on it fast. Don't get caught up in red tape; have confidence; present evidence and move quickly. Everything moves so fast, which means you've got to mirror that and react fast.