Ad Ops All Stars: Recent Episodes
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Ad Operations is a competitive, fast-paced field that demands cross-functional collaboration, strong leadership, and stellar communication. Every week, we go behind the scenes with top AdOps leaders to understand how they operate, the challenges they’ve faced, and what’s been key to their career success.
Russ Macumber found his start in eCommerce through marketing, running six-cent ads through Google in the early 2000s, focusing on a handful of banner ads and minimal tracking data. He remembers that back then there was very little information about how well ads were performing, and what exactly is bringing customers into your store.
Growing up serving customers in his parent's business, Russ knew very well how important that kind of information is to your overall business. And now years later has helped found Impressive Digital, a young and innovative ecommerce marketing group focused on delivering new digital and in-person traffic to your store, as well as providing tracking data and proven methods to lead customers towards conversions.
Hear more about Russ's journey, the challenges he has had to overcome, and the insights gained along the way below.
Ari Paparo got his start in the Adtech industry by joining a small company at the time called Doubleclick, shortly after the dot-com crash. There he helps turn the fledgling adtech group into one of the industry's biggest names, later leading to an acquisition by Google.
After spending some time as a product manager there, he moved on to Nielson where he developed the Digital Ad Ratings system that delivers deduplicated audience measurement metrics across computers, smartphones, tablets, and connected TV.
From there he went from AppNexus, and then started his own highly customizable DSP, Beeswax, allowing companies to operate as their own bidder instead of using cloud bidders.
Now he’s off to Comcast.
Ari’s unique and impactful story as a groundbreaking adtech leader is full of deep-dive insights into building leading companies and products from the ground up. Listen in to hear his story and knowledge about the ecosystem he played a heavy hand in developing.
Lisa Howard started her journey towards becoming a global leader in online advertising at journalism school at the University of Georgia, where she competed as a student athlete in swimming. Her goal was to become an Olympic gold medalist and later a sports newscaster. But after her Olympic trials and an advertising class, her vision changed.
Now she leads the advertising and marketing teams at the world's premier news organization, The New York Times.
Listen in to gain Lisa's unique and powerful insights on the online advertising industry, and how she juggles managing one of the largest publishing sites in the world.
Upper management in ad ops can lead you to have a diversified role, epesically when your company works across a vartiey of specializations.
MediaMint is a service provider for the entire digital marketing eco space, capable of connecting and working with clients from all parts of the landscape, be it digital advertisers, ad networks, or digital publishers.
Here Kamalesh manages a team of 200 people and roughly 25 clients, doing everything from managaing partnerships to ad ops reporting and anyalsis, and backend techincal assitance.
Listen in to learn more about Kamalesh's eight years at MediaMint, starting as a team lead and working his way into a Senior management role.
Dan Rua is CEO of Admiral, The Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) Company. Admiral VRM helps thousands of digital publishers worldwide grow visitor relationships and revenue, via adblock recovery, paid subscriptions, registration walls, email/identity, GDPR/CCPA privacy consent and more. Admiral VRM offers one tag, one vendor, one consistent visitor experience; cleaning up the multi-vendor Frankenstein of 5-10 vendors fighting over a visitor's attention -- improving UX and growing Average Revenue Per Visitor (ARPV). Prior to launching Admiral, Dan was the seed investor and COO/CRO for a large music streaming publisher that reached 100M+ visitors by putting visitor relationships first. Prior to that, Dan was named #4 Most Loved VC and #17 Most Respected VC while backing and building 40+ companies in media, software and technology, managing three VC funds with DFJ and others. Dan earned his BS (Computer Engineering) from UF, MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and JD (Intellectual Property) from UNC Law School.
John Shankman, founder and CEO of Hashtag Labs started his dive into Ad Ops while on his lunch break selling to a Hoover's competitor in the early 90s, right when the blogosphere was starting to blossom. John's interest in buzzwords, jargon, and where the internet was heading in "Web 2.0" lead him to start researching the topic and eventually landed him a job doing ad sales for early online brands like TechCrunch, Mashable, and Business Insider.
Listen in to learn more about John's journey, his approach to the ad ops ecosystem, and the continuing evolution of the industry.
How does ad operations differ in the U.S. as compared to Europe?
How did Motorsport Network double programmatic revenue without increasing headcount?
How does a someone with a graphic design background become an ad ops team leader?
How can you rip out and replace an entire ad tech stack without disrupting revenue or operations?
Motorsport Network VP of Programmatic and Ad Operations Jeremy Zimmerman answers these questions - and more - on the latest episode of the Ad Ops All Stars podcast.
Jeremy got his start as an IT support specialist who was doing graphic design work and building websites on the side. When he had the opportunity to go into ad tech, he jumped at it. That was about 10 years ago in what he calls "the earlier days" of the ad ops world when programmatic was just getting started. His career took him from Rodale to American Media and Billboard, before landing him at Motorsport Network where he leads the company's global advertising operations team.
It's not unusual for publishers and agencies to use offshore resources for their ad ops teams, and we've covered how to manage those relationships several times on this podcast, always from the perspective of the "onshore" ad ops leader managing that offshore team.
But what we haven't covered is what it's like to lead an offshore ad ops team, from the perspective of the person in that offshore management role.
MediaMint Associate Director Mahendran Singh leads a 250 person ad ops team for MediaMint, a 1,500 person agency with offices around the globe and serving some of the world's leading brands. On this week's Ad Ops All Stars podcast, he pulls back the curtain on how the offshore half of the relationship is managed, and what onshore leaders should know about building a productive relationship with offshore teams.
From working in the mining industry to managing a 200+ person ad ops team at CBS, Dennis Colon has done it all. He learned the ad ops business from the ground up, has been an individual contributor and a leader, and is now taking what he's learned to his role as VP of Product and Strategy, Media Division at Jiffy.ai.
In this week's episode of Ad Ops All Stars, he shares what it was like building the ad ops team at Conde Nast from 7 people to 60+ and how he successfully managed a team of more than 200 at CBS, along with advice for aspiring ad ops leaders about how to prepare to take on leadership roles.
How did Jeremy Gan go from being a "young, hungry, and scrappy" engineering student to VP of Revenue Operations at MailOnline?
On this week's episode of Ad Ops All Stars, Jeremy shares his career story, including what it took for him to advance within the ad ops ranks at Daily Mail, why mentorship was key to his success, and how his immigrant background has impacted his career and outlook.
In many cases, ad ops is an under-appreciated part of a publisher's business.
Melissa Chapman is on a mission to change that by lifting up ad ops professionals and helping them communicate the strategic nature of what they do.
As the founder of Part Two Consulting and a Collaborator at Beeler.Tech, Melissa advises publishers on building out their ad ops teams and brings ad ops pros together via the Beeler.Tech community to learn, share best practices, and support each other.
Listen to or watch the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Melissa's story.
LiveIntent CMO Kerel Cooper didn't start his career out in marketing.
Following stints in ad operations at companies including Earthweb, JupterMedia and Advance Digital, he moved on to LiveIntent where his career has evolved from platform development, to account management, product marketing, and now Chief Marketing Officer.
On this week's episode of Ad Ops All Stars, he talks about making the transition from ad ops to marketing, and shares advice for anyone considering doing the same.
TechTarget Director of Brand Operations Heather Lemon didn't start out in ad operations. Instead, she got a degree in graphic design (at just 17!) and then went on to get a certificate in front and back end programming. Initially, that led her to work as a web designer for a real estate company. Soon after, she took a job as an ad trafficker at TechTarget.
That was back in 2010. Today, she is still at TechTarget, but has risen through the ranks to the role of Director of Brand Operations. In that capacity, she oversees a team of 8 and has navigated tremendous growth at the company - including 3 acquisitions in just the last few years.
Today, Heather is focused on making her team more efficient through the implementation of robotic process automation (RPA).
In this episode of Ad Ops All Stars, Heather shares her career story and offers advice on everything from managing major organizational change, to mentoring younger team members and the benefits of building repeatable processes.
Michael Bendell's ad ops career spans an impressive list of large media brands (Federated Media, MTV, BlogHer/SHE Media, etc.), as well as niche players like This Old House and Ebony.
Today, he's leveraging what he learned through those experiences to provide consulting advice to media companies.
In this episode of Ad Ops All Stars, Michael talks about what it was like from working in ad ops at large brands with big teams and plenty of support, to running ad ops for This Old House, where he had to dig in and do a lot of the work on his own.
He also shares lessons learned from navigating several mergers and acquisitions, and talks about the challenges of managing rapid change.
In his role of SVP of US Ad operations at Kinesso, Chandon Jones manages an ad ops team of 35+, with members spread across the country.
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, he shares his advice on hiring for ad ops teams, best practices for management, and what aspiring ad ops leaders should be focused on now in order to set themselves up for success in the future.
When it comes to ad ops, Jade Graves has worked across many different sides of the business.
From his early work as a sales engineer at Burst Media, to working as a sales manager and later manager of ad platforms at Nexage, to his role as director of programmatic sales at Rythym One, and now, as Senior Director of Publisher Business Development at MobileFuse, he's had an opportunity to learn what makes ad ops teams - and media businesses successful.
Jade's experience has also given him deep insight into the mobile advertising world, including the opportunities and challenges it poses.
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Jade talks about his career journey and what aspiring ad ops leaders should do to build their skills, along with his take on the top challenges facing the ad ops world today.
With software increasingly moving more in the direction of open source, what does that mean for the future of ad ops?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Assembly Director of Advertising Operations Andrew Fowler explains why he believes software engineers are uniquely positioned to thrive in the world of advertising operations, and why publishers have an opportunity to develop new revenue streams by commercializing their homegrown software.
How did Mike Richter overcome adversity to become the Vice President of Global CTV Revenue Operations at Jukin Media? (a role he was just promoted to this week!)
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Mike shares his incredible career journey, and opens up about the challenges he has faced as a gay, HIV positive man—and why facing those challenges is integral to his success.
This is an honest, raw, and inspiring story that you won't want to miss. And if Mike's personal journey isn't enough to draw you in, he also shares insights into running ad ops for a CTV brand.
How do you go from working in ad operations to serving as Chief Operating Officer for a major media brand?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, SHE Media Chief Operating Officer Ryan Nathanson talks about his career journey, and how he transitioned from working in ad sales, operations and yield, to COO for first Salon Media Group, and now SHE Media.
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Timehop and Nimbus VP of Programmatic Product Development David Leviev talks about how his career has evolved from programmatic ad operations to product development for a publisher exchange and in-app mobile.
David didn't originally set out to work in ad ops. He was a psychology major who became fascinated by how advertising works and what motivates people to take action.
Following stints at Nestle, HBO, NBCUniversal, and PubGears, he began working at Timehop, where the team recognized inefficiencies in the way open marketplace inventory could be monetized. In response, they built a homegrown solution for in-app header bidding which has since been commercialized as Nimbus.
In this episode, David talks about what it was like going from managing ad operations to developing a new product, and why he believes the ability to "unlearn" is a key skill that the ad ops leaders of the future will need to master.
What are the biggest challenges facing today's ad ops teams?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Media Tradecraft COO and Co-Founder Justin Hansen talks about viewability, content analytics, and identity - three of the biggest challenges that publishers are coping with - and explains his approach to solving them.
Justin's ad ops career has included stints working in-house in various ad ops roles, and now as a consultant helping some of the world's top publishers solve their monetization challenges.
What do the most successful publishers do when building out high performing ad ops teams?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Aditude Founder and CEO Jared Siegal talks about some of the most common mistakes publishers make when building out their ad ops business, and shares insights on what they can do to fix them.
Jared's ad ops career began at Answers.com, where he joined early in the company's growth and eventually was part of a team managing $150 million in programmatic revenue. From there, he went to Playbuzz, where he built out the video team, and led ad ops as well as publisher account management.
That experience ultimately led him to create Aditude, where he helps publishers build out their ad ops functions and tech stacks. His work at Aditude gives Jared unique insights into the common challenges facing publishers, as well as the best practices that some of the most successful publishers are using to drive revenue.
What does it take to build a successful career as an ad ops leader?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Beeler.Tech founder and CEO Rob Beeler shares insights from his storied career in ad ops.
Known throughout the industry for his roles as Content Czar, and later Publisher and Chairperson at AdMonsters, Beeler's career has spanned in-house work as the ad ops leader for Advance Internet and GOLF.com, to providing consulting and building a thriving community of ad ops professionals at his company Beeler.Tech.
He describes working in ad ops as "50% of your day is putting out fires, 50% of your day is being strategic, and 50% of your day is managing people" — basically, a battle against complexity — and talks about why learning from the wider community of ad ops pros is the best way to stay at the top of your game.
In addition, he discusses the importance of building your personal brand and why that can help you to advance in your career.
What is it like to grow an ad ops team from 8 to 200 people?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, ENGINE Senior Vice President of Client Services Elizabeth Rodriguez shares her ad ops career story.
While she's currently working in client services, Elizabeth has run ad ops and worked more broadly in publisher operations. When she joined GroundTruth, the ad ops team included 8 people - four in the US and four in India. During her time there, Elizabeth grew the team to include 200 people around the world, with 45 of them working directly in ad ops roles.
In this week's episode, she explains how she developed a formula for knowing when to grow the team, shares her advice for managing multinational (and multicultural) teams, and talks about how she's learned to prevent herself and her team from experiencing burnout.
What skills do ad ops leaders need to develop to advance in their careers?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, U.S News & World Report Director of Ad Technology & Platforms Emily Morin talks about why, as an ad ops leader, it is so important to develop a well rounded understanding of the media business.
Emily's approach to building her career is based on the theme of what she calls "holistic unification" - which refers to bringing together all of the different sides of the media business. From content, to business strategy, to marketing, web development and technology, she's made it her mission to learn more about what drives success in the media world.
Her well-rounded background has made Emily the natural choice to spearhead major organizational changes at publishers like Hearst and U.S. News & World Report, and in this episode, Emily shares advice on how to manage change as an ad ops leader, navigating relationships with other teams, and why she's a fan of agile management.
What does it take to build a more diverse and inclusive ad ops team?
This week on Ad Ops All Stars, Eric Hill of Cars.com talks about his experience as a black man in the ad ops world, and what he's doing today to increase diversity in the profession.
Eric's ad ops career has taken him from managing digital revenue and operations at Tribune, to overseeing advertising strategic sales for Microsoft, and now serving as ad operations and ad trafficking manager for Cars.com. In that time, he's managed teams as large as 50 people and as small as four, working on both the direct and programmatic sides of the business.
Today, Eric is focused on giving back to the ad ops community by mentoring younger professionals, and playing an active part in encouraging diversity and inclusiveness.
As an ad ops leader, what are the biggest challenges you wish you could solve?
For Keith Candiotti, viewability was at the top of the list. During his tenture as Director of Ad Operations at the New York Daily News, Keith learned a lot about building high performing ad ops teams and optimizing the team's tech stack and processes.
Building on that experience, Keith went on to found Optimera, a company that began by focusing on helping publishers to optimize viewability and has since evolved to provide a wide range of services aimed at improving ad revenue and performance.
From how to work with a direct sales team, to differentiating your direct business from your programmatic offering, Keith shares his insights on what it takes to lead a best-in-class ad operations team.
Most ad ops teams got their starts as purely direct sales models and then evolved to a programmatic one, but Marc Boswell and the team at LoveToKnow Media have done just the opposite.
Having begun with an all programmatic stack, they're now developing a direct sales business line—all while completely revamping the company's programmatic business (or as Marc puts it, "blowing up the entire programmatic engine and starting over").
In this episode, Marc talks about how he undertook a complete overhaul of his programmatic stack and ad unit structure without harming revenue, why he won't work with resellers, what he did to build a faster ad stack, how his team is involving with the addition of direct sales, and what it's like managing an all-remote team (a model that dates back to pre-COVID times).
James Strang is the Founder of AdOps Boost and a technical whiz when it comes to the business of ad operations.
He's also a champion of neurodiversity who's been chronicling what he's experienced professionally as a person on the Autism spectrum via a series of videos on LinkedIn (search #spectrumofjames on LinkedIn to find his video blogs).
In this week's episode of Ad Ops All Stars, James shares how his career led to the field of ad operations, what he's building at AdOps Boost, and why he believes neurodiversity is an asset that should be valued by employers.
Lila Hunt is Head of Digital Ad Strategy at System1 where she heads the team that owns the company's programmatic ad revenue strategy.
From teaching ballet and preschool, to getting a degree in multimedia, to working in ad ops, Lila explains how her career led to leadership roles in ad ops, and why she thinks ad ops should be renamed "monetization."
She also digs into what her experience has been like as a woman in the ad ops industry, including the challenges she's faced, and how she's preparing to go out on maternity leave in just a few months.
Sarah Wagner's career has given her unique insights into the world of advertising operations.
From her early work as an ad ops strategist for ComicBook.com, to brand- and agency-side work at Envision Healthcare and Fusion92, to serving as Director of Programmatic for Tribune Publishing, she's gotten a 360 degree view of what it takes to effectively run advertising operations.
Today, Sarah is the Lead Revenue Strategist at 10Up, which makes websites and tools for content creators and publishers like Time, ESPN and Adobe.
In this week's episode of Ad Ops All Stars, Sarah shares what she's learned in each of those roles, how technology has changed the field of ad ops, and what future ad ops leaders should do now to build a successful career.
Jared Collette is Senior Director of Ad Operations at Major League Fishing where he oversees ad and sponsorship product development, digital governance and analytics, ad serving platforms and processes, and email advertising.
Jared was brought in to Major League Fishing when the company wanted to expand its presence from linear TV to digital. He and his team built the ad operations organization, which covers the website, app and livestream properties, from scratch.
In this episode, Jared talks about what it's been like, as a team of two people, to create and run an ad operations department that is mostly direct sold deals, with some programmatic in the mix.
Scott Messer is SVP, Media at Leaf Group where he overseas revenue operations across Leaf Group's Media division and manages a portfolio of 40+ owned and operated, vertical-focused websites.
In his decade plus of work in advertising, Scott has been responsible for third party monetization, revenue operations, vendor management, contract negotiations and advertising technology.
Prior to that, his early career included stints working on feature films, doing business development for National Lampoon, and in development at an investment bank.
In this episode, Scott talks about how his early work in film, comedy and investment banking led him to the world of advertising, why becoming a leader means developing industry relationships and having opinions, what his predictions are for the return to "normal" in the ad ops world post-COVID.
Listen to or watch the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Scott's insights.
When it comes to advertising operations, Mark Verone has "been there, done that" across a range of industry leading brands including Gogo, Orbitz and iHeartMedia.
Today, he's a sought after marketing operations and technology advisor on topics relating to streaming entertainment and media apps, marketing vendor management, and performance marketing, just to name a few.
Mark's work supported expansive growth from $235M to $835M over tenure with Gogo, from $685M to $765M at Orbitz, and from $1.5B to $8.9B at Clear Channel (iHeart).
In this episode, Mark shares lessons learned throughout his career, including the traits he looks for in new hires, why he uses agile to manage his teams, and what he's learned about being an effective leader.
WeatherBug Head of Advertising and Ad Operations Ron Duque shares his approach to hiring, managing and mentoring ad ops teams.
Catherine Beattie heads up the ad operations team at Encyclopaedia Brittanica and Merriam-Webster, where she runs a small team that manages the company's 100% programmatic advertising operation.
Prior to Brittanica, Catherine was the Senior Director of Digital Ad Operations for Tronc, and in this interview, she talks about what it was like making the transition from running a large ad ops team that blended both programmatic and direct sales, to a small, all-programmatic team.
From handling complaints from users, to ensuring that your category blocks are consistent with your brand and audience values, Catherine shares her day to day challenges, along with what she looks for in new hires, and what advice she would give to anyone starting out in ad ops today.
Listen to or watch the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear what Catherine has to say about running a modern ad ops team.
CafeMedia Chief Strategy Officer Paul Bannister talks about his career in advertising and shares his perspective on what it takes to build a career in Ad Ops.