Q: What is best practice now?
A: Ad operations in publishing has always been a pressure point, but the nature of that pressure has changed. Historically, the challenge was managing volume. Today, it’s managing complexity with increasingly multi-functional teams. Publishers are running print, digital, sponsored content, newsletters, events, and social placements with disparate and often legacy systems reliant on diligent operators to join the dots.
Best practice starts with centralised management and integration. With ever more multi-functional teams, systems need to do the heavy lifting and minimise specialist skill sets – publishers just don’t have the capacity to maintain dedicated teams for each advertising vertical. Post booking, the planning, chasing, reception, creation, publishing and reporting should omit all but non-essential user interactions, driving a workflow that presents users with exceptions and approvals. Users should shepherd the process – not be the process.
The organisations doing this well have adopted solutions that provide their enterprise with a single, centralised version of the live truth: what’s been sold; what’s been chased; what’s left and becoming critical; what’s planned / published, and conversely what’s available to sell.
The best adops teams work smart, seamlessly glueing sales, editorial and advertiser requirements together while efficiently servicing each vertical’s needs.
Q: How do you see it changing in the future?
A: The most significant shift is the inevitable convergence of historically segregated adops teams. Publishers who have kept these as separate operations, separate teams, separate systems, separate reporting are increasingly finding that separation is a liability. Ad supply chains are increasingly campaign-led rather than media-led. Agencies and advertisers are running integrated campaigns across multiple formats and expect a single, coherent relationship at the publisher end – not a different contact, system, or process for every vertical.
The operational consequence is already visible: publishers are collapsing separate adops functions into single, multi-vertical teams. But a merged team isn’t automatically a merged operation. The real challenge is ensuring systems carry the process knowledge, not the individuals – so a smaller, broader team can confidently service every vertical because the workflow guides them, not the other way round.
With regards to print, demand isn’t going away, but the margin for error is shrinking. Production timelines are tighter, teams are leaner, and the cost of mistakes is higher. Publishers still running ad operations relying on spreadsheets, email and user diligence are limiting their long-term viability while carrying risks they may not fully appreciate.
Q: What are your three top tips?
So what does good look like in practice? The problems are well understood – the harder question is what to actually do about them. Here are three principles the most resilient adops teams are building around:
1. Converge your operations before your advertisers force you to: Today’s ad supply chains are campaign-led. Agencies brief holistically – across print, digital, social, events – and expect a joined-up response. A publisher that routes that brief through three separate teams, three separate systems, and three separate email threads isn’t just inefficient; it’s a friction point that damages the commercial relationship.
The publishers pulling ahead aren’t waiting for a crisis to merge their operations. They’re building the infrastructure now – shared booking, shared visibility, shared reporting – so that when a client asks for a joined-up view, the answer isn’t three spreadsheets and an apology. Convergence isn’t just an operational improvement. It’s a commercial one.
2. Make your systems the process – not your people: This is the hardest mindset shift, but the most important one. In too many operations, the system records what people do. In the best ones, the system drives what happens next.
Post-booking, every step – chasing materials, tracking receipt, flagging deadlines, routing approvals, escalating exceptions – should be owned by the workflow, not delegated to whoever happens to notice. Users should be presented with decisions and exceptions, not left to manually join the dots between platforms, inboxes, and spreadsheets.
This matters more now than it ever has. Teams are leaner. Specialist knowledge is harder to retain. A process that depends on the right person knowing the right thing at the right time is one resignation away from breaking.
3. Know what’s critical before it becomes a crisis: Most adops teams find out something is at risk when it’s already too late – a materials deadline missed, a booking left unchased, a placement that never went live. By that point, the damage is done: a client is unhappy, revenue is at risk, and the team is firefighting instead of operating.
The publishers managing this well have shifted from reactive to proactive. They have live visibility across every vertical – what’s been booked, what’s been chased, what’s outstanding, and what’s becoming time-critical. Not buried in a spreadsheet or an inbox, but surfaced automatically as a flag that demands attention.
That kind of operational awareness isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. It’s what allows a leaner, multi-functional team to manage higher volumes without things falling through the cracks – and it’s what separates an operation that copes from one that’s genuinely in control.
About Papermule
Since 2003, Papermule has helped many top UK publishers turn slow, clunky adops processes into streamlined workflows. Our cloud-based advertising management platform ADDESK / PLANDESK automates copy-chasing, ad production / management and flat planning – reducing errors and improving ROI. Trusted by The Telegraph, Bauer Media, Daily Mail Group and The Guardian.
Email: mhoy@papermule.co.uk
Web: www.papermule.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1379 650330
This article was first published in Issue # 1 of Best Practice in Publishing, a new publication from InPublishing. Click here for links to the other ‘best practice’ articles from the publication.
