Nestled high in the Denver Post building downtown, the Adtaxi team is hard at work. Unlike your typical ad agency, Adtaxi works specifically with media companies, like the Denver Post, to deliver digital advertising services to their clienteles.
The AdOps team is the engine driving the ship. Divided into social media, real-time bidding and search advertising groups, AdOps operates largely behind the scenes. This team ensures the company’s ad campaigns not only function but perform against specific metrics.
The team’s deep expertise certainly makes that possible. But so does Adtaxi’s culture, which encourages employees to push boundaries and try big ideas, including those that come at a risk.
ADTAXI AT A GLANCE
FOUNDED: 2010.
DENVER EMPLOYEES: 85.
WHAT THEY DO: Leverage search, social, email and native advertising through a global network of media brands and publishers.
WHERE THEY DO IT: Downtown Denver.
WHO THEY DO IT FOR: Businesses ranging from small mom-and-pop shops to large established brands.
THE VIEW: Civic Center Park, the historic city hall and capitol buildings — with a Rocky mountain backdrop.
EXTRA CREDIT: Stretch goals that allow employees to be rewarded for work that falls outside of their day-to-day responsibilities.
IDEAL CANDIDATE: Team players, risk takers, thought leaders. People who think it’s cool to geek out about data and technology. People who want to be challenged and aren’t afraid to challenge others respectfully.
Describe how you collaborate, both as a team and with the other teams at Adtaxi.
Jill Ranegar, social campaign manager: While we all manage our own regions, we also collaborate across verticals. We run into the same issues in different business categories. That's when we're able to collaborate and find trends. We have a lot of support from client services, quality assurance and web development teams, too.
Austin Lanners, social campaign manager: We work with client services to ground the sales reps and tell them what's possible and what isn't. Then the QA team is on the opposite end of the process. When we have to do more coding or technical work that we're not specialized in, they help us out.
When did you know you had joined the right team?
Ranegar: I've been here since June. A recent memory that solidified my position was when we went downtown to celebrate a promotion for one of our team members. We all crammed onto the 16th Street Mall. Being able to celebrate the success of another teammate, and also get to know each other outside of the office on a personal level, that was cool.
Lanners: For me, it was after I’d been training for a while and was finally given my region and my campaigns. I think that's when I was like, "OK, now I'm officially a part of the team because I actually have things that I'm responsible for.”
Nathan Patrick, strategic campaign manager: Each quarter, we have optional stretch goals that allow us to take on an extra project. I wrote blog posts about real-time bidding and presented them to an upper management group. Not only did they love everyone's projects, but they also had other ideas to contribute. So for me, that moment was realizing that the leadership here actually cares about the extra efforts being made.
David DeHart, director of RTB operations: For me, it was a series of micro-moments. I came in as a campaign manager and quickly moved into the role of product lead — and then team lead, manager and director. Being in a position to wear different hats has let me see where we've improved. I continue to see our future growth plans and our growth history, and all of that just validates what we're doing.
Name something you didn't know your role entailed when you first joined?
Lanners: At my previous job, I was running Facebook ads but it wasn't nearly as in depth as what we do here. Specifically, it’s the conversion tracking and setting up conversion points on clients' websites. It's manipulating code, working with jQuery and learning how the back end of a website works — that's been really cool.
Ranegar: I agree. scratching the surface of coding is really interesting to me. The creative freedom, trust and personal initiative is also really rewarding. I feel like we're able to really own what we do. It's refreshing to be able to stretch your wings.
What current or upcoming AdOps initiatives are you most excited about?
Patrick: Probably automation overall. The team I work on has been around the longest, so there are not as many new things going on. It's more about how you can get more work done with less, and automation is the front end of that. Adtaxi's big thing is called Magellan. It's our proprietary algorithm that helps us optimize campaigns.
Ranegar: We've also applied for our badge permission from Facebook, which is a really big stepping stone for the social media team. It's really cool to have an opportunity to play in the big leagues.
It only validates our efforts, too. Being able to roll up our sleeves and put effort into something big and see what's going to come out of it. It's really validating. The criteria for badge partners is pretty stringent.
DeHart: We're also working closely with Oracle Data Cloud to better understand third-party data, relevancy and reach. We have third-party data segments that are literally hundreds of millions of people. And if those data sets include, for example, everyone in the United States. What’s the value in that?
Oracle acquired Bluekai and some other data providers, so all that data is flowing through their pipes. They're putting together audience graphs and they're doing a lot of data science with all these various data sources.
Of course, we always curate the audience — or try and find the audience through optimization over the lifetime of the campaign — but it's helpful to have a more informed starting point.
What has been your favorite Adtaxi project?
Lanners: With this Facebook badge, they wanted one case study of a campaign that performed really well. Adrian Abeyta, manager of social operations, asked the team to submit campaigns that had performed well over a three-month period. One of my campaigns in the Bay Area got selected as a case study because it's been doing really well.
They've been a client of mine since February or March. Not only are they happy with it, but Facebook is happy with it and thinks it's good enough to be used as a case study. To see that has been really rewarding.
What does professional development look like at Adtaxi? What opportunities are there for growth?
DeHart: I‘m a good example of someone who came in at the entry level and has become a director. When we talk to candidates, we talk about the growth paths within each team and also throughout the company.
We've had someone on my RTB team go over to client services, for example, having worn the shoes of a campaign manager but wanting to expand the breadth of her role. She decided she wanted to move to client services, and we were really supportive of that.
There are also roles that we don't yet know need to exist but that will need to exist down the road. If someone has a vision and understands our business needs, there's an opportunity for them to carve out a new role. A good example of that is the client services team. Someone saw a need for an intermediary between clients and sales and operations — someone to bridge that gap — and they basically created that role.
Lanners: Like Nathan said earlier, those stretch goals are a good opportunity to do something on top of your normal work that may or may not be in line with what you do. It's a good opportunity to step outside your comfort zone or grow new skills — and you get rewarded for it.
What are some of the qualities a person needs to be successful on this team?
Ranegar: I'd say a willingness to adapt to an ever-changing digital climate and an ability to interpret data to support your decisions.
DeHart: Attention to detail. Self-starter. Curious and ambitious. A thirst for knowledge. Someone that always wants to be learning. I would also say the ability to look for answers to questions, but know when it's appropriate to ask for help or ask for an answer because you couldn't find it on your own.
How would you describe the culture at Adtaxi?
DeHart: One of the greatest things about working here is that everyone really does have a voice. Yes, we are nestled in this big corporation — Digital First Media — but Adtaxi itself doesn't feel corporate in the sense that lower-level employees don't have a voice.
We definitely have a unified direction from the top down, but it's not a one-way conversation. Even people who come into the company brand new, if they see what we're doing and they understand the business needs, they can say, "I want to work on this stretch goal because I think it would help us gain efficiencies in these areas.”
That's not available in every company, where a lot of times you hear managers simply saying: "This is how we do things, and this is how we’re going to do things.”
It's a healthy work environment, where everyone really does have a voice — upward and downward — throughout the company.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
