Ads are one of the revenue pillars in Schibsted. But capturing the money does not only depend on great sellers. The sellers also need efficient tools to do their work. And so do ad traffic managers and many other functions that every day ensure that our ads machinery runs smoothly.
But how to do all this?
Enter Rose and Vantage – Schibsted´s own tools for booking and reporting of ads.
– The tools are there to empower Schibsted´s sales representatives to grow sales and to improve the return on our clients´ marketing investments, says Frode Ådland, product director for Advertising Solutions in Schibsted News Media.
Booked for more than million Euro
Rose and Vantage are currently used in five markets and for 70 websites. Last year ads for more than 100 million Euro were booked through Rose.
– Rose is currently used by 1200 people, most of them in Schibsted, says product manager Linda Bjerkås Grødahl.
She has the overall responsibility for both products, working closely with product manager Mahesh Kumar Mohan in the Vantage team. The plan is that the two products eventually will merge into one.
- Rose is a tool used to book ads. It gives an overview of the available inventories and lets the sellers ensure space for their campaigns. Rose is also where a new ad product is set up and defined.
- Vantage is used for ads reporting. It shows the results of the campaigns.
Team in three countries
As many product development teams in Schibsted, also the Rose and Vantage teams work very distributed.
The product management is located in London, close to Schibsted´s ad server partner AppNexus. The London team consists of two product managers, one coordinator and a front-end engineer.
In Oslo is a UX designer, while the heavy lifting in software engineering is done in Schibsted Tech Polska in Krakow, Poland. In total 9 software engineers – 7 for Rose and 2 for Vantage – are based in Krakow.
– We try to meet physically as often as possible. Usually we are able to do so about 1-2 times each quarter, In addition, we have a daily video stand-up, explains Linda Grødahl.
The Krakow part of the Rose and Vantage teams. From left: Jacek Zawodny -> Michał Zydroń -> Kamil Lis -> Kamil Gruszowski -> Mateusz Janik -> Me -> Dawid Smoter -> Sebastian Maliszczak
Expanding scope
The Rose team has a history that is similar to a number of product & tech teams in Schibsted – moving from developing only for one brand to serving companies in several countries.
For Rose, it started in the Norwegian news brand VG, which needed to rebuild its booking system. But even before Rose was launched, also the Norwegian marketplace site Finn was included in the scope. And then Schibsted´s subscription papers in Norway.
Today the tool is used by around 60 sites in Norway. These include Schibsted´s own news sites, Finn and the Polaris media houses.
In addition, Rose is used by Subito in Italy, Tori in Finland and several of Schibsted´s sites in Spain.
Ad sellers use Rose to book their ad campaigns
Adding functionalities
– The main focus of the Rose team now is to add new functionalities, says engineering manager Andrzej Karmazyn.
The team also spends much time on implementing the so-called seat split in AppNexus. Previously Schibsted had one account in AppNexus. This is now changed to one account for each national market. The technical implementation of the seat split is a rather big project that has high priority for the teams in Advertising Solutions this year.
The teams try to meet in one location at least once every quarter.
Next step: Self-serve ads
The next big project is to add self-serve functionality to the Rose tool, allowing advertisers to book their own ads.
– We want to add this as a layer on top of Rose, allowing the advertisers not only to book, but also to target their ads as they want, says engineering manager Andrzej Karmazyn. This will replace a tool that was previously built in London – and that now will transferred to Leboincoin.
– It has been very interesting to work with Rose. It is a cool project, with many fun challenges for a backend developer like myself. Also it has been very motivating that we are the “owners” of the took – and have been able to pick the technologies we use, says Andrzej.
Vantage: Documenting the effect
While Rose is used for booking the effect, Vantage tells the sellers all about how the campaigns worked.
– The tool gives data such as impressions, clicks, viewability, how much of the campaign has been delivered, etc., says engineering manager Sebastian Maliszczak in Krakow.
For the Norwegian market, the tools are connected to the market analytics database Norstat, which adds detailed demographic information about who saw the ads.
Vantage gives detailed information about the performance of the ad campaigns.
Important tools
– Rose and Vantage are tools that are very important in the daily work of our ad sellers, says Christina Ekeberg Amble, head of yield management in Schibsted Norway Ads.
She points out that the tools follow the whole workflow of the sellers from booking through reporting.
– For Rose, it is important for us that it is a simple and well-functioning system. Vantage, on the other hand, lets the sellers follow the campaign deliveries. They also get possibilities to optimize the campaign to ensure the best possible results according to the customers´ goals, she says.