We see display ads all over the internet - but how do they get there?
It's not magic.
Usually they get placed there after a lot work has been done by an advertising agency.
Agencies specialize in helping companies market their business.
Many businesses don't want to take valuable time away from what they're doing to focus
on how to market their products.
That's why many of them hire specialists at ad agencies to do the job for them.
It's important to note that some companies *do* want to manage their own advertising.
In the advertising world, this group is called marketers.
Right now, we're going to focus on agencies, since they're more prevalent.
But whether it's an agency or a marketer, the basic steps in launching an online display
campaign are the same.
Let's say an advertiser has created a new product and they want the whole world to know
about it.
The advertiser will let the agency know about the product and request a new ad campaign
to promote it.
Once the agency agrees to launch the campaign, somebody has to figure out where they should
run the ads, what the creative tone should be, and, of course, how to get the ads on
the websites.
It sounds like a big undertaking - and it is.
So, who does what?
Let's start with figuring out where to buy ad space.
This is the responsibility of a Media Planner -- sometimes called a Media Buyer.
They have to create a list of sites where they want their ads to show.
They pick sites based on where their audience spends time online.
This list of sites is called a Media Plan.
The Media Planner negotiates with each site to determine how much it will cost to show
their ads there.
While the media planning is underway, the ads need to get made!
The creative team - sometimes from a creative agency, sometimes from the same agency as
the planner - comes up with a concept and design.
Then, they build the ads.
In this industry, people call ads Creatives.
So, we'll be using both terms from here on out.
After the ads are approved by the advertiser, they need to get uploaded to an ad server.
This is where a Trafficker comes in.
The trafficker goes into the ad server, uploads creatives, and assigns them to run on sites
from the media plan.
Once everything is set up, the trafficker generates ad tags.
Ad tags are little pieces of code that allow websites to request an ad.
These ad tags get sent to the publisher who sets them up in their web server and the campaign
is ready to run!
At the end of a campaign, the agency pulls a big report to show advertisers where their
money went and what they got out of the online ad campaign.
This is time well spent.
The advertiser wants to make sure they're spending wisely, and the agency wants their
client to be happy so they come back for the next big campaign.