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Simple, But Key Digital Lesson Learned in 2011
Jay Lauf
Monday, February 6, 2012
As we turned the corner into the new year and I reflected on lessons learned in 2011, there was one insight I believe is of genuine importance to fellow magazine publishers: Have the right support system in place to enable an unfettered move to digital.
As you may have read, The Atlantic had an unprecedented year digitally in 2011. Traffic for all of our properties reached record numbers and so did our digital revenue. In October, we reached a milestone. Digital beat print for the first time ever, totaling 51 percent of the ad revenue for the month. (For the year, 46 of our ad revenue was digital).
Sounds like things were all great - and they were. But getting there wasn’t always a breeze as you might imagine. What may seem like conventional wisdom became poignantly real to me as we reached new levels of volume: in digital, the initial IO is just the beginning for the Sales and Ops teams.
Delivering 43 separate ad campaigns in the month led to inventory crunches, but also tons of optimization effort. Without enough experienced planners and traffickers, our sales team risked being embroiled in internal work that would have distracted them from being out with clients or in key brainstorms – the process by which they generate business. Additionally, there was a risk of not delivering on business we had closed without careful, fast and accurate inventory management on a day-to-day basis – something that requires both the right number and the right quality of people.
I’m blessed with an extremely dedicated team of planners, sellers, traffickers, and marketers and so we made it through our high volume stretch, but not without a little wear and tear. That stretch also reconfirmed for me the need to shore up the support teams in 2012. The natural impulse for most of us charged with generating business is to automatically add salespeople when given the chance to add staff, but in the world of digital, I’d urge you to consider whether you have enough good people in the planning and Ops ranks. If your sales force is embroiled in the internal, executional work of plan delivery, you risk not only taking them off the front line, but frustrating them in the process.
Additional head count may not always be the solution. But in lieu of that, having experienced, quality professionals in the roles that ensure campaigns deliver is critical to not only protecting the revenue you have booked, but to ensuring you can be out there booking even more.
Jay Lauf is publisher of The Atlantic.
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