Activating video ad campaigns continues to be a complex process full of friction that results in many errors and much frustration, according to new research released by video ad workflow platform Extreme Reach and conducted by Advertiser Perceptions. In a survey and follow up interviews with 150 video ad ops professionals at agencies, 3 key pain points emerged: insufficient lead time, lengthy searches for appropriate assets and overwhelming variety of specs/formats required by media plan participants.

65% of participants either strongly or somewhat strongly agreed with all of the following statements: “Digital teams are spending way too much time mired in manual, error-prone work,” “It’s operationally challenging to deliver all of the creative assets in all formats,” and “Pubs, ad servers and tech partners frustrated with getting creative assets at last minute without time to test.”

Overall, 93% of respondents said there are issues sourcing and preparing creative assets, with 51% to 59% saying video campaigns start late due to issues with the assets. Extreme Reach attributes the situation to industry under-investment in asset workflow. Ad ops pros seem to be ready for a change: 88% said “yes” in response to the question “Would a service that allows the media agency, creative agency and client to share and access creative assets from a central, permissions-based cloud location be helpful?”

All of these challenges are driving frustration among ad ops professions. Overall, 16% of respondents reported they were either “not too or not satisfied” with their day-to-day job responsibilities, with another 44% saying they were “somewhat satisfied.” 39% reported that during a typical week, they’re most engaged in putting out fires, 34% are reacting to incoming issues and problems and 30% are managing client/vendor relationships.

There seems to be a gap between agency and client understanding of the workflow for implementing video campaigns, with just 29% of respondents saying that clients understand the workflow very well.  

Clearly, while there has been a lot of investment in time and resources to improve targeting and the use of data, the process of operationalizing campaigns remains suboptimal.

The full report can be downloaded here.