Yieldbird – Behind the Scenes of the AdTech Company

At Yieldbird, we look to help our clients to optimize their Programmatic revenues and manage their advertising space on the Internet. But how do we set about achieving these optimizations? How do customers reach us? Who is responsible for delivery, results, negotiations, and technical issues? Well, let us guide you through the process, step by step.

It all starts with our Growth department, which is made up of two teams: PR & Marketing and New Business & Publishers. Our PR & Marketing works on building an awareness and recognition of our brand, taking care of the graphic design of our materials and pursuing a number of initiatives, such as posting posts, items of interest, and case studies on our blog. The team also runs webinars and trainings on Programmatic. What is more, they monitor current trends and news (for example, contributing to Reddit AdOps community), look after artwork, participate in industry events, run social media, publish a newsletter, take care of SEO, collect company know-how, and turn technical details into marketing ideas.

The New Business & Publishers team engages in proactive searching for potential customers, contacting Publishers who can benefit from our solutions. Additionally, our Business Development Executives are the first point of interaction for those Publishers who contact us. The teams then assess whether we are in a position to help them, and to what extent. These first engagements are called lead generation talks.

Another key activity of the team is the securing of potential deals with new customers. This normally completes a process which has seen the input of specialists and technical advisers. At meetings, the teams present our products, explaining the processes and benefits, and setting out terms of cooperation. We provide services to customers both from Poland and abroad, so we look to have a broad language pool to cater for all communication flows.

What follows when Publisher express an interest in cooperation?

We invite them to test the product! And from that moment on, our Customer Success team takes care of all related aspects. It is they who tend to our Client’s needs, building relationships and trust. Their first task is to prove the merits of the product – setting the conditions and assumptions, and guiding the Client through the test; and summarizing what we have managed to do, what benefits we have achieved now, and what we can do now moving forward.

So everything has gone smoothly and the Client is satisfied with the test. What follows from this point?

All clients have different needs, so as Customer Success Managers we try to meet their requirements and expectations – like chameleons, navigating in various environments, from corporations to start-ups. Corporate Clients will be more interested in weekly status reports, whereas for start-ups flexibility and informality in communication come to the fore.

Customer Success Managers deal with a group of their own Clients for whom an SPOC (single point of contact) is assigned. A Customer Success Manager acts as an internal Project Manager who has to manage a given problem and ensure that it will be solved in a time frame that is satisfactory for the client. CSMs also have to translate both the solution and the ad-tech speak into a mode that the Client understands.

In addition, an important part of working in Customer Success is understanding the Client’s needs, and learning their business over time; all so as to be able to optimise delivery. More and more often, we also take on short consulting projects, auditing the current situation of the Client, which allow us to discover the full potential of the Publisher’s revenues and the factors inhibiting their growth.
At Yieldbird, the entire Customer division responsible for cooperation with Publishers, comprises four departments: Customer Success, Customer Performance, AdOps and Demand Development.

AdOps and Customer Performance teams

People working in the AdOps and Customer Performance teams have both experience in managing advertising space on the Publisher’s side, analytical competences and soft skills such as relationship and communications building skills.

The AdOps team is involved in many activities, and often takes part at the first New Business meetings regarding potential cooperation with a new Publisher. They provide support and explain in a simple and accessible way the technical aspects of operation and capabilities of our services or products. The AdOps team must constantly keep up with the changes taking place in the AdTech industry and the Programmatic ecosystem. They must also develop recommendations for action or consult the possibilities of new solutions with both the Customer Success and Customer Performance teams, and the Technology department.

Looking at the competences of people working in the AdOps team, one of the most important elements of their experience is the knowledge of adservers (including Google Ad Manager or Adform) and the knowledge of SSP technology. People in this team have experience with and knowledge of JavaScript or HTML (e.g. they know how to implement changes in code in order to improve its operation), they are also familiar with performance reporting metrics such as CPM, Floor Price or RPM.

On a daily basis, work in the AdOps team involves configuring, trafficking, optimizing or managing advertising campaigns, using either Google Ad Manager or other adservers. The main goal here is to increase advertising revenues for Publishers. CPMs are also responsible for creating or managing inventory, creating Header Bidding, generating codes and their verification or supporting the Publisher with implementation. In addition to these tasks, our AdOps Specialists and Experts identify and solve problems related to ad servers or take part in larger projects that are carried out in Yieldbird. The variety of tasks in this team means that they must approach their tasks with great attention to detail and prioritization.

A role of the Customer Performance team is to constantly monitor and control the performance indicators of those Publishers who are assigned to a given person. The monitoring of Publisher performance indicators requires analytical thinking, verification of results and tests, analysis of large amounts of data, and noting dependencies or drawing conclusions. Often, together with people from the Customer Success team, they take part in meetings with our partner Publishers, presenting and explaining a given situation. Having a broad picture of Publisher performance results, they also prepare analyses and share recommendations that can help increase Publisher revenues. Up-to-date knowledge of the Yieldbird product offer as well as knowledge about optimization methods means that they also actively cooperate with the Technology or Data Science departments on the improvement of our solutions and products.

Demand Development team in AdTech company

The last team we would like to introduce is the Demand Development team, which is responsible for two areas. The first is to provide additional demand for Publishers, and the second is to forge a partnership between Publishers and Advertisers. The Demand Development team deals with clients in the area of ​​Programmatic Direct Sales, involving contact with Publishers, Advertisers and media houses. They build sales offers in the Programmatic Direct Model and actively look for opportunities to improve the results of both Publishers and Advertisers. Their competences and knowledge are related to the entire Programmatic ecosystem and Direct campaigns. They often conduct trainings or presentations related to automation or Programmatic capacities.

Another area that the Demand Development team looks after is the technical aspects of campaigns implemented in the Programmatic model. They are responsible for placing campaigns and deals, including optimization, reporting and troubleshooting. When analysing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, they look for additional sales opportunities or the improvement of results.

What connects all our specialists and experts – regardless of their position or the team in which they work, is their sharing of knowledge and experience in various forms. These range from direct daily contact with the Publisher, through to training or transferring know-how to other Yieldbird members; but they also participate in industry events and webinars, not to mention the writing of articles and the creation of case studies. Find more interesting materials on the Programmatic industry in our blog and do not forget to sign up to our weekly newsletter!