👋 Today, you’re hearing from an ad ops expert MicherSponsy about how they can make it a LOT easier.

Non-paid partnerships aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

From my experience, a simple yet well-designed Google Sheets is a great way for small/medium-sized newsletters to manage their ad calendar.

But I WISH the tools Sponsy offer existed back then. So once you have the budget I have always recommended considering Sponsy to automate and professionalize ad ops

Now over to our guest Michele Patrassi, Co-Founder of Sponsy. He’s unloading some wisdom imported from extensive experience with helping improve ad ops for publishers like TLDR, Stacked Marketer & Zoomer Media.

(Sponsy haven’t paid for this).

How to make Ad Operations efficient

Ad operations are fundamental to maximizing revenue potential. In ad sales, how you package, price, upsell, and renew your offerings is crucial.

However, ad operations are often underestimated. They can become a small leak in your boat, at first not significant, but as time goes on, the water accumulates. Before you know it, you're spending all your time and energy bailing out water.

Repetitive tasks such as tracking available inventory, sending constant reminders and reporting can become a major time sink. And when data is not organized properly, core operations such as pricing and booking are impacted. 

The great news is that improving your ad operations doesn’t have to be complicated. With just a few key tweaks, you can transform your processes into a revenue-generating powerhouse.

Let’s see how!

🗓️ Share your ad calendar between sales & ad operations

We’ve seen it time and again—sales and ad operations working in silos, with ad bookings bouncing back and forth. The result? Overbookings, missed opportunities, and plenty of headaches.

A shared calendar is the secret weapon your ad business needs. It bridges the gap between your sales and ad ops teams, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Keep it simple, easy to read, and make sure it clearly shows the status of each ad spot—whether it's being pitched, sold, or ready for delivery.

What should you use? Don’t overthink it. Start with what works for you—Google Sheets, Calendar, Notion, or Airtable are all solid choices. The tool doesn’t matter as much as making it accessible, shared, and color-coded for quick clarity. Your team should be able to spot the status of any newsletter at a glance. 

Pro tip: Choose a tool that tracks edit history—you’ll thank yourself later when you need to troubleshoot!

🖼️ Leave no room for doubts or delays when gathering assets

When it comes to running successful ad campaigns, gathering creative assets from advertisers is a crucial step. Remember: without assets, a campaign can be canceled or delayed. In both cases, you lose revenue. 

It's important to make the process as clear and smooth as possible. Be customer focused, even obsessed, and it will pay off; renewing a sponsorship is often easier than finding a new lead.

We also buy sponsorships at Sponsy. When the process went well - thanks to collaborative efforts on the final copy, unexpected cross-posts on social media, and other customer-centric actions from the publishers - we were happy to renew. It’s not a sponsorship otherwise, it’s a one time transaction.

Here’s how to optimize your asset gathering:

• Media Kit: make sure your specs are clear. Define whether a logo or banner is needed, specify the size, and determine who writes the copy and its length. Clarify everything upfront to minimize errors and reduce back-and-forth. It may sound obvious, but a simple, well-structured media kit available as PDF can save countless hours of back-and-forth emails.

• Deadlines: clearly define key dates—when assets are due, when the ad goes live, and when reporting will be provided. Those are the dates both parties need to know and have at hand. Don’t sleep on it.

• Reminders: advertisers are busy. They may forget about their ads until the last minute. Set up reminders to ensure the campaign stays on track. You can snooze emails in your inbox, Slack reminders, or use dedicated software to handle reminders automatically.

• Centralized communication: limit information to one or two channels. Avoid spreading information across socials, Slack, emails and more. A good strategy is one email thread with a supporting Google Doc. Make the doc public to avoid any permission issue.

By focusing on these core details, you’ll not only ensure your campaigns stay on track but also demonstrate your value to advertisers.

🗞️ Pick the right ad delivery for you

All your hard work on ad management does not matter if the ad doesn’t make it into your newsletter. Let’s ensure it lands perfectly!

There are three main ways to place ads into your newsletter:

• Manual placement: copying and pasting assets into your newsletter is the simplest approach. It makes sure content stays native - text renders as text - and allows you to control and see how the ad looks before sending. If you’re a pro, you can even customize your newsletter content to make the ad flow seamlessly into it. Not so fun to do with many newsletters? Hire a VA. For such limited work it would be less expensive than adding another tool to your advertising stack.

• Ad Server: this method involves placing a fixed tag that displays the ad as an image in your subscribers' inboxes. It works well when your ad doesn't contain text, or when displaying the ad as text isn't a priority. It's especially effective if you're sending newsletters frequently, and it can allow you to serve more relevant ads to the subscribers based on first-party data when available.

• Integration: if you have the resources, an integration taking the ad from your inventory and placing it natively in your newsletter is a good option. One of Sponsy’s customers, Last Week In AWS, successfully used our API and Retool to make it happen. They review the final newsletter, and then publish it in ConvertKit. Storing your ad assets in Airtable and using their API to build an integration is also a viable approach.

Start with manual placement and optimize the process—copy-pasting from ad inventory should take seconds, not minutes. As you scale, consider options like a VA, ad server, or integration.

Always consider the type of ad you’re serving. For instance TLDR, despite managing many daily newsletters, places their ads natively as text.

Other publishers might find image ads from an ad server more effective. It really depends on your audience and the type of ads.

When in doubt, test both methods and analyze metrics such as ad CTR and overall engagement. This will help you make informed decisions! 

📊 Leverage ad metrics to your advantage

As a publisher, working with ad metrics must be your bread and butter. 

There are three key actions to take with ad metrics: store, share, and analyze. Every ad you run offers data that can move your business forward.

Store core metrics such as opens, clicks and CTR alongside the related ad and client details. While gathering this data from your ESP can be repetitive, tools like Zapier or Make can help automate the process. Better yet, consider using an ad management solution that integrates with your ESP to streamline this workflow.

Share performance with your advertisers. A final campaign report should always include opens, clicks, and CTR—both aggregated and per ad. For long campaigns, consider providing mid-campaign reports or after each ad run, as these are highly appreciated by advertisers. You could email the results, but giving your advertiser a place where to access the performance of every ad they run with you it’s even better. It makes a stronger relationship and leads to better results, as you can jointly evaluate past campaigns performance to better plan future ones.

Lastly, analyze your data. It can reveal invaluable information such as which placement performs best, the ideal days to run ads, and what makes top-performing ads stand out. Once your data is centralized, it's simply a matter of combining and reflecting on these metrics. This step unlocks powerful insights that can transform your media business.

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Ad Operations are easy to start, but hard to master and scale. The good news is that, with a couple of tweaks, you can increase efficiency and transform a weak spot into a well-oiled machine that drives your revenue.