Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
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Migrating to a new advertising platform is essential for adapting to the evolving media business, requiring a clear strategy and expert assistance to avoid pitfalls. Key best practices include choosing the right platform based on business needs, thorough preparation with detailed checklists, and ensuring stakeholder alignment and proper training. Conducting pilot migrations, maintaining quality assurance, and addressing any roadblocks early will facilitate a successful transition and maximize the benefits of the new platform.
Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
- 1. Avoiding the Pitfalls Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
- 2. Avoidingthe PitfallsAvoid ingthePitfalls Avoidingthe PitfallsAvoid As the media business evolves and changes, so too should the operational tools that support the business.
- 3. Theorem www.theoreminc.net Ad platform migration is one of those unavoidable necessities. Whether you’re migrating your platform because of discontinua- tion of your current service or because a different platform has applications that suit current and future requirements, you must make sure to identify poten- tial problems, map out a clear strategy, and line up the expert help you’ll need. The act of switching from one platform to another involves many moving parts, but the good news is that it’s already been accomplished many, many times by many, many organizations. And their experiences can be channeled to build best practices that will help you carry out a successful, stress-free migration. Any successful migration plan has to take into account both strategic and practical considerations. The first step should be to choose a platform based on your organization’s specific business requirements. Once that choice has been made, you’ll have to answer such questions as, Which processes absolutely must remain unchanged? and, Where can we benefit from process enhancement? One of the recommendations by migration experts is to not overcomplicate the transition: if your current setup is working for you, now isn’t the time to reinvent the wheel. Other key steps include selection of a project manager—preferably someone who’s been through the migration process several times before—and assembly of a team and training the members. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
- 4. Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net 21 Research New Platform Options Create New-Platform Checklist From a practical standpoint, you’ll want to think about a pilot or test period, consider how the migration will affect your placements and your campaigns, and gather all of the major details that must be included in the migration. Following are five best practices to navigate your ad platform migration successfully. Theorem’s Five Best Practices to Navigate your Ad Platform Migration Successfully.
- 5. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform T W O • T H R E E 3 4 5 Align the Business Behind the Platform Set the Course Practice, Practice, Practice
- 6. With the decision to migrate to a new platform made—either by choice or by necessity—the first step should be to research which platform would best suit your needs both now and in the future. You have to be certain that the new platform offers all the features you’re looking for: Does it support ad formats that you require or prefer to use? Does it support targeting options and key values? Moving to a new platform provides the opportunity to upgrade to a cleaner and easier user interface. Adopting a friendly user interface can give your Do Your Research 1 Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net
- 7. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform F O U R • F I V E business an advantage because it would let many tasks be managed more efficiently, such as duplication of line items rather than having to create them manually each time. Another important issue is to have a forward-look- ing, next-generation platform. Questions you should answer during your research are, Will the platform be able to integrate desired platforms in the future, such as programmatic, data reporting, and customer relationship management? An important consideration is to have a forward-looking, next-generation platform.
- 8. Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net As you prepare to migrate to a new ad platform, define your must-have list.
- 9. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform S I X • S E V E N As you prepare to migrate to a new ad platform, it’s important to define your must-have list by answering the questions, What must be brought from the old platform? What should be replaced? and, Where can we make quick wins? Make a list of the details on the ad servers involved in the migration. Here are some areas to consider: • Number of ads and number of campaigns. • Information about your advertisers and the campaign and business details that will have to be migrated, such as billing details and points of contact. • Start and end dates, number of impressions remaining, budget, line items, and other details. • Don’t forget geotargeting information, such as sites, zones, and countries. • The creative and the tags are also important, so be sure to account for different formats. Include in your list the creative assets that will have to be uploaded—including the proper landing-page URL—because you might not be able to copy all of these. When catalogs move to a new platform, it’s possible they’ll get represented in an unfamiliar way. Make sure the way they appear fits with your business practices, and make any necessary adjustments. Do completed campaigns and expired ads have to be migrated, too? Make sure they’re on your list. And just as important, make a list of properties and items that aren’t going to be migrated. Preparing for and carrying out all of these activities requires a commitment of time and resources. In addition, those involved in the migration should be given clear guidance on how and where ads have to appear. They must be given the opportunity to test out all those different media, such as display, video, and mobile. Create Your New-Platform Checklist 2
- 10. Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net Once you’ve prepared that checklist, make sure the right team is on board and that you’ve included all stakeholders. Do your team members have the resources required to perform the migration? Have you allocated a quali- ty control team to ensure the migration meets prerequisite development requirements? How about your order management process? Is it highly effective, or are you bogged down by sign-off problems from different parts of the organization? Your internal teams will only be as effective as their knowledge of the sys- tem allows, so devote time to training everyone involved in the migration, as well as end users. Beyond the operations team, you should prepare those on the advertising side, your sales reps, those who maintain your Web site, and other partners. Find out what each one of those stakeholders needs to know about the new platform and how it operates, and provide them with training materials or user’s manuals. Make sure everyone knows about the migration plan—particularly your firm’s agency and advertising clients. And to ease the transition, prepare your systems engineers in advance and as quickly as possible for any up- grades or modifications to the platform user interface. Align the Business Behind the Platform 3 Make sure the right team is on board and that you’ve included all stakeholders.
- 11. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform E I G H T • N I N E
- 12. The way you migrate your inventory may depend to some de- gree on your chosen platform. The way you migrate your inventory may depend to some degree on your chosen platform. Some platforms might allow a simple transfer of data by using their application programming interface (API); other platforms might require a more manual migration. In the case of a manual migration, teams will need to enter all details into a spreadsheet—including line item attri- butes—in order to manually create those attributes in the new platform, which will create extended timelines. In most cases, an automated solution is best. Automated tools, which utilize the APIs available through the platforms, extract ad campaigns from one server and upload the campaigns to the new server. This process should begin at least several weeks prior to when the migration kicks off. In terms of planning, teams will need to: • Determine how current tags will be configured on the new server. • Monitor the migration to ensure everything is transferring correctly. • Troubleshoot and correct campaigns that may fail to upload. • QA the migration by choosing samples to ensure the quality is as expected. Set the Course 4 Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net
- 13. If there were road- blocks, now is the time to resolve such issues rather than wait until you’re in full migration mode. You may be eager to get settled on the new platform, but migrating all cam- paigns right away would likely cause problems. Instead, begin with a pilot by choosing a couple of standard campaigns to start; a pilot is important if you’re opting for an API migration. Make sure that every step in the pilot is properly documented, that the ads are performing as expected, and that you always perform a quality assurance check to simplify the full migration later. If possible, bring a client in to test out that client’s campaigns and make sure the campaigns are running as expected. Once you’ve successfully migrated more-standard campaigns, test the more-complex, specialized ones to find out whether the platform is robust enough to manage all types of campaigns. Track placements, and test them in a live environment to verify the platform would support your needs. Before full migration, make sure the platform performs as required, and if not, determine what the problems are. If there were roadblocks—say you’re having difficulty in migrating a particular section to the new platform—now is the time to bring in your engineers to resolve such issues rather than wait until you’re in full migration mode. Practice, Practice, Practice 5 Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform T E N • E L E V E N
- 14. Avoiding the Pitfalls Theorem www.theoreminc.net We are digital performance experts, accelerating growth and driving operational efficiencies for organizations across the digital ecosystem. Through a full suite of advisory, operational and technical solutions, Theorem helps organizations unlock new sources of value – allowing clients to maximize returns from digital channels much faster and at scale. Theorem optimizes digital efforts by seeing the full picture—getting clients on the right path and overcoming all obsta- cles along the way. For more information, visit us at www.theoreminc.net © 2017 Theorem, Inc. All rights reserved. THEOXX_022817 973 665 1700 I www.theoreminc.net 26 Main Street, Chatham, New Jersey Before finally retiring your old platform, check that you haven’t missed any- thing—for instance, whether old campaigns, historical data, special cam- paigns run as one-offs, or any other content could be important in the future. And don’t forget that your new platform provider needs feedback about what is and isn’t working—especially in the early months. Migration to a new platform doesn’t have to slow you down, but adopting and applying best practices and taking a methodical approach can save time and help you avoid needless mistakes. Now It’s Time to Migrate Migration to a new plat- form doesn’t have to slow you down, but applying best practices can save you time.
- 15. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform F O U R • F I V E Avoidingthe PitfallsAvoid ingthePitfalls Avoidingthe PitfallsAvoid