I had the opportunity today to job shadow at Casanova Pendrill, an ad agency with a focus on Hispanic communications. Because of my interest in digital and the internet, I was able to job shadow for with the digital media team. Meeting with the Digital Media Supervisor, Randy, we walked through the basics like the 3 most common banner sizes (728×90, 300×250, and 160×600) and how they are able to track their sales (in the case of it being a retail client).

It was pretty cool to learn how important cookies are to advertisers. Cookies are important because it tracks your activity online. So if you click on a banner ad and it takes you to the retail’s site and you browse, your cookies follow you. But if you happen to close out without buying anything, we are able to retarget users by giving them an ad for the retailer they clicked on earlier but the image would show a shoe that you looked at and give you an incentive, like $10 off your purchase. Of course, if you clear you cookies and cashe, then the data gathered is lost, otherwise cookies are only live for 30 days.

Randy emphasized that there is a lot of research that has to be done before anything even happens (of course research is very important, especially when dealing with clients and money, you can’t go wasting!). So we walked through planning the plan which is essentially figuring out WHO you’re targeting and what they’re like. I got to see Simmons and comScore data which was pretty cool. In my Media Planning class, we looked at MRI, but it was nice to see other types of data sites’ interface and how they work. Simmons is much more user-friendly than MRI since you’re able select exactly what elements you want to include as demographic and psychographic information based on your targeted audience. It was great to get a refresher on vertical and horizontal % and how it provides relevant data. And comScore tracks traffic reported by sites so you can see based on your targeted audience, which sites or publishers you want to use to place your ads.

We then moved onto RFPs (request for proposals). This was completely new material for me. Using the publishers listed on comScore, the agency would send them the RFP which includes a template that is very similar to a creative brief. It goes over briefly what the objective is, who are audience is, the insight (research), target demographic market, creative assets wanted for this account, etc. The agency would then send a form that’s blank except for certain headers like site name, CPM, SOV, etc. The publishers would then fill it out with the appropriate information and send it back to Casanova Pendrill with it filled out with what they are willing to offer per impression based on the budget. Of course, negotiations can be made, especially for publishers who want to charge large amounts when the team could simply get it cheaper with someone else. If they are unwilling to lower their price, then they wouldn’t be included in the campaign. The RFPs go through multiple edits until the team is able to choose a plan and set amount of publishers they want to use and with the final chart, it’ll list the team’s projections for the client based on the budget.

Then, Randy showed me the final step, making the recommendations to the client through a presentation. He is a strong believer in delivering a presentation that is pleasing to look at for the client and easy to understand. Which is very true as we learned in school. This is where the team would break down the entire campaign to the client with all the charts and reasons why they chose the publishers that they did and what did the client get out of it (usually it’s that they saved some money because it didn’t cost as much as projected). Randy also explained how you don’t necessarily have to pay for the impression but rather by people who actually engage (or interact), completely watch the ad video to completion, etc especially if it’s cheaper and more cost effective.

Lastly, we talked about insertion orders that are sent to each publisher that gets used in the campaign. This tells the publishers that the agency wants these spaces and that they need to reserve their inventory for them. It makes both sides accountable and leaves a paper trail to back it all up.

This was a really great experience to have. I got to see how a real agency works and how they work through making sure everything gets done for the client. It’s very different from doing school work where it’s all hypothetical. This is the real deal, where a simple mistake actually means something. It was also great to see how a campaign starts and ends. We do school projects that are similar to this, but they tend to be more limited because we don’t have the resources like access to comScore, Nielsen, etc. I would totally recommend anyone to go job shadow because you get to see, learn and experience things that are very different from school. It can also definitely help when you land a job especially when you don’t have any real agency experience.