Senior Ad Operations Manager

Provide daily support to 500+ person sales team concerning ReachLocal display advertising products and publishing partners, including serving as primary support for Facebook Ads, MyAds, and In Banner Video ads, assisting in the management of $2 million in monthly advertiser budgets.

• Worked with Facebook to run campaigns testing variations in images, copy, landing page content, and targeting to document recommended practices for our advertisers based on the collected data. Determined that refined targeting combined with ad content specific to the targeted group has the greatest impact on ad performance, while landing page content related to the ad has the greatest effect on overall user engagement.
• Explore in banner video advertising opportunities with 3rd party providers to expand our product offering. Run campaigns to determine most effective processes for campaign submission, ad creation, and reporting, as well as to determine expected range of variance and manage expectations regarding ad performance. Produced all related documents, including ad specs, creative submission questionnaire, and sales materials. Determine cost structure to ensure that we could maximize the media budget when factoring the incremental cost of video ad serving.
• Develop a Google AdWords site targeting list to ensure maximum inventory availability at the lowest cost to extend inventory options we provide to advetisers. Research AdWords category targeting to determine whether to make the option available to our advertisers as part of our affinity targeting packages.
• Test FAN MyAds inventory to determine expected cost and performance, including using ad categories to help improve inventory quality. Made product decision not to include this inventory in our standard display ad packages due to poor performance.
• Recommend new processes to limit number of Flash clickTag errors to reduce ad rejections from our publishing partners.
• Work with publishing partners to calculate inventory availability and advise sales team in RFP process.
• Provided administrative support to executives piloting a Group Buying program.

Responsible for performing the full scope of Ad Operations duties and providing additional support (HTML updates, content management, idea generation, etc) to Interactive Services, the group responsible for generating the largest amount of revenue outside of ticketing - $6M.

• Improved Live Nation 1.0 ad tags by creating additional targeting opportunities and communicating specifications to the development team.
• Assessed current targeting abilities and future needs of internal departments to develop business requirements for Live Nation 2.0 ad infrastructure; worked with product teams to develop new targeting capabilities for Live Nation 2.0 ads.
• New targeting capabilities increased 728x90 click-thru rates from .18% (untargeted) to .75% (targeted) and 160x600 click-thru rates from.19% (untargeted) to .30% (targeted) by improving the tagging structure and ad tags for the redesign of LiveNation.com and HouseofBlues.com.
• Serve as the internal point of contact for all day-to-day needs of the Alliances, Product and Marketing teams regarding ad tagging, trafficking, troubleshooting and reporting.
• Evaluate and revise trafficking process to create more clarity in the submission process, improve turnaround times and ensure campaign deliverables are met; draft documents to be used in the process and present information to several internal departments.
• Work with Interactive Services group to develop special ad programs for major partnerships with Fortune 500 companies; draft Business Requirements and other documentation, QA partner micro-sites before launch and update live sites.
• Worked on projects for several high profile clients, including Wrigley's, Hilton, Citibank, Nokia and Starwood.

Responsible for all advertising operations, including reporting, analysis, inventory forecasting and QA/troubleshooting ad tagging problems, both in a development and a live environment.

• Created site and ad tagging infrastructure in partnership with Doubleclick and Buzznet engineering; migrated ad tags and ads from OpenAds to Doubleclick and deployed on eight sites accounting for over 100 million monthly impressions.
• Handled all creative assets for internal advertising and client campaigns, ranging from standard .gif, .jpg and flash files to rich media including Pointroll, Klipmart and Eyeblaster; managed creative assets and tags from key vendors, such as DoubleClick, Atlas and Mediaplex.
• Served as DFP network administrator, responsible for additions and modifications to the network and sites, maintaining ad zones and managing users and their permissions.
• Developed ad specs and guidelines; worked with ad networks to determine the appropriateness and potential eCPM yield of individual ads.
• Acted as the liaison between the sales team and Buzznet staff to determine ad products and creation strategies; communicate with all sales representatives regarding advertising capabilities, available inventory, targeting options, problems and campaign reporting.

Responsible for forecasting online advertising inventory based on analysis of historical data and current traffic trends.

• Used DART Enterprise to reserve inventory, stage ads and generate campaign performance reports.
• Staged and tested all advertising creative to ensure proper functionality, a seamless user experience and that website specifications were met; communicated with sales people, clients, and vendors in order to resolve any ad functionality issues prior to "going live."
• Served as DFP network administrator, responsible for additions and modifications to the network and sites, maintaining ad zones and managing users and their permissions.
• Optimized and adjusted campaign delivery based on pacing, ad product performance and third party variance.
• Maintained current market segments to provide accurate inventory data, better analyze site traffic and ensure that the advertising message reached the proper users.