Great stuff Tom Hespos. Become an Ad-Serving Power User does a great job in iMediaConnection today of painting an accurate picture of how few agencies take full advantage of their ad serving technologies.
Tom focused on the training aspects of using your ad server. “All it takes is a minimal investment of time and perhaps some cash. Even if your ad management contract calls for some nominal fee for planners to attend advanced training sessions, the expense in time and money is well worth it.”
Check out How to Pick an Ad Server – Part V: Training. In this post I talked about finding out training within a ‘sandbox’ verses training on your actual campaigns a data. There is something inherently more interesting about something that is relevant. When going through training, such as a Webex. It is hard to sit through imaginary data and think about how you will have to go back and do everything you are watching all over again on your own. Elementary training is one thing. But advanced training is something else. If you are going to sit through training – especially is you are going to get charged for training – you should be getting more out of it than just knowledge. You should be getting accomplishment.
“When you get trained, ask to get trained with a campaign that you need to get setup so that you kill two birds with one stone.” This was a big point that I was making in the post I referenced above. The “How to Pick and Ad Server…” series of posts that this comes from looks at ad server selection from a number of angles: (1) Evaluating the Interface, (2) Rich Media, Targeting and Optimization, (3) Price, (4) Training, and (5) Customer Service and Support.
Your training experience should offer you the opportunity to include the setting up of actual campaigns. The relevant experience will stick with you while simultaneously accomplish something for you. You can go farther in terms of applying more aspects of the technology when you are doing so with real-world clients. Even if there are features that you would not be using with a client, you can set them up in training and then turn them off afterward. The experience of training with a real client will stick with you.
Furthermore, if you are training on an actual campaign, it has to be done differently then in a presentation format. Webex is a great tool as it can go both ways. For example, a presenter can show you how to do something with a sandbox environment and then give you control and have you do it with one of your campaigns while they watch. We do that with our clients, pass control of Webex back and forth. That way we can see what clients are doing and guide them through the process. Learning by doing rather than learning by watching. Teach a man or woman to fish right?
Reactionary with Insight
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