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Blog · field notes from the control room

Ad ops, in practice.

Short essays and incident reviews from the team that builds the platform — what the monitors catch, what the receipts mean, and what the work looks like between the dashboards.

Cadence Field notes when the work warrants writing about it
Archive 30 posts · 2022–2024
Blog categories: Operations, Product, Observability, Industry, Post-mortem — five editorial threads from the team that builds the platform.
All posts · 30 shown
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Industry

If Data is Missing You End Up Guessing. You Might As Well Bet It All On Black.

Discover how streaming and broadcasting operations teams can reduce guesswork and risks by leveraging real-time data, automation, and comprehensive analytics. Learn strategies to optimize decision-making in high-stakes environments.

2024-10-04 · 6 min
Product

From Operator to Supervisor. Revolutionise Your Daily Ad Operations

Did you blink? Then you've missed it. In digital ad operations you need to move from the operator to the supervisor. Here at 3 ways.

2024-09-17 · 6 min
Product

It's the US Election - do you know where your political ads are streaming? Here's how to meet your FTC obligations.

At the time of writing there are only 100 days left to the 2024 US elections. It will be the most streamed election in history and the biggest spend of

2024-07-31 · 3 min
Product

Mid-Year Product Updates: Exciting New Features and Enhancements

As we pass the halfway mark of the year, we're excited to share the latest product updates and enhancements that have been rolled out so far. Our team has As we pass the halfway mark of the year, we're excited to share the latest product updates and enhancements that have been rolled out so far. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring you new features that improve functionality, streamline processes, and provide greater insights.

2024-07-11 · 3 min
Product

18 Billion Potential Points of Ad Delivery Failure. Here's How You Protect Yourself.

18,631,973,192. That's the number of permutations of ad inventory that makes up a typical 24 hrs for an ad supported broadcaster. 2,282 Ad Creatives, Use Watching That's Validation Monitors protect you from ad delivery failure by preventing errors in the human inputs when setting up campaigns.

2024-06-26 · 3 min
Post-mortem

From Overwhelmed to In Total Control. How a Billion a Month Broadcaster Transformed their Ad Monitoring.

"What do you mean we haven't been serving ads on for over a week?!?!" "How did this happen?!"  "Why didn't we notice it sooner?!"  "This is going to

2024-06-18 · 5 min
Product

Avoid Ad Overload and Bad Ad Experiences. Keep on top of Your Exposure Rates

Over exposing your viewers to ads can have catastrophic effects.  But under exposing them leaves money on the table.  How do you get it right? Bad ad

2024-06-11 · 3 min
Product

How to Easily and Quickly Setup A Viewer Complaint Response System That Works

Are you tired of chasing your tail when it comes to responding to viewer complaints?  Always being the last to know something isn't right, and then not

2024-06-05 · 3 min
Observability

Let’s Talk About…. Ad Revenue Monitoring

In the world of streaming video, if you blink you’ve missed it.  And if you’ve missed it then you can get into trouble pretty quickly.  Small issues

2024-05-23 · 8 min
Product

Unveiling Inspect: Find The Needles In Your Inventory Haystacks

We are thrilled to introduce our latest module in the Watching That Analytics and Monitoring Platform: Inspect. This powerful addition is designed to

2024-02-20 · 4 min
Industry

Streaming Media Businesses Must Revolutionise their Revenue Monitoring Solutions. Now.

In the fast-paced world of streaming media, where every second counts, revenue operations are at a critical juncture.  Their days are akin to

2024-02-12 · 5 min
Industry

Watching That's Predictions for Streaming TV in 2024

While 2023 will be remembered as a tough year for Tech and Media, Streaming TV has continued its growth trajectory with the surge in FAST channels and ad With plenty of noise around for the year ahead, we asked our team for their predictions based on what they’ve seen happening over the past few months.

2024-01-02 · 3 min
Product

Monitoring Pixel: total continuous monitoring of all your inventory with Watching That, code free!

Are you a revenue or technical operations professional in a streaming video business?  Or an executive in charge of ensuring your business is maximising

2023-11-24 · 7 min
Product

Mega Product Update: Q4 2023

We’ve updated the Watching That platform – across the board. We have new ways of connecting your data, visualizing your data, and troubleshooting your

2023-11-01 · 9 min
Operations

Complete Your Ad-Tech Jigsaw Puzzle

From today, users of Watching That can easily connect to even more critical sources of data. Along with our current library of turn key player plugins and

2023-10-02 · 2 min
Operations

Let's Talk About... Sell Through Rate for CTV

In the digital world from – eCommerce to video advertising – the metric Sell Through Rate is a key performance indicator.  Because of its importance to

2023-08-21 · 12 min
Industry

Welcome Zak and James

Zak Khalid and James Carr Join the Team Here at Watching That, we’re delighted to announce two new hires – Zak Khalid and James Carr – to our growing

2023-08-21 · 2 min
Operations

How A+E Networks uses Watching That for their FAST Channels

“When it comes to analyzing FAST channel data and performance, the A+E team leverages multiple Watching That resources.” says A+E Networks VP Revenue Operations, R. Lee Barstow.

2023-08-10 · 2 min
Observability

Dimension Focus: Campaign Hierarchy

2023-08-07 · 3 min
Operations

Dimension Focus: Content

People don’t come to your service for the ads - they come for the content. So in this Dimension Focus we’ll look at the dimensions that can help

2023-07-24 · 3 min
Operations

Watching That's Real-Time Data Monitoring Story

Watching That has been named a Finalist in the 2023 Cynopsis Measure Up Awards, in the 'Best Tool for Real-Time Reporting' category. We're really excited Always-on, near real-time monitoring is just one aspect of the Watching That experience. We also offer customisable reports, comprehensive troubleshooting, with our customer support team with a background in video and data analysis.

2023-05-18 · 3 min
Product

Dimension Focus: Device Type

In this Dimension Focus we explore the Device Type dimension.  Device Type Device Type is a dimension that describes what device an ad was viewed on. But

2023-04-21 · 3 min
Product

Trump was indicted. Here’s how we knew it was big news.

Our data platform is always-on, and reports in near-real time. This means if something big happens we see it immediately reflected in the data we collect On March 30 2023, at 17.30 the news broke that former US President Donald Trump had been indicted. Across the USA, viewers turned to streaming news to hear the full story.

2023-04-06 · 2 min
Operations

Dimension Focus: FW: Selling Partner

In this post we’re spending a little time with one of our most commonly used Dimensions, FW: Selling Partner. Most of our Freewheel customers use selling

2023-03-13 · 2 min
Industry

IAB's Compass report points the way for the UK’s CTV future

As an IAB Member, we were excited to see the release of the Compass report on CTV this week. Sitting alongside reports on Gaming, Shoppable Advertising,

2023-02-08 · 3 min
Industry

Surviving CTV’s Awkward Adolescent Phase

This text is based on a talk Cameron Church gave at the Future of TV Advertising Global event in December 2022. Read the full article below, but

2023-01-26 · 4 min
Industry

The Future of TV Advertising Global: 5 Things We Loved (1 Thing We Didn't)

This week the Watching That UK team descended on King’s Cross for Mediatel’s Future of TV Advertising Global event. Our CEO Cameron graced the stage at

2022-12-12 · 4 min
Industry

The Tyranny of Data Decay, and How To Avoid It

Whether we’re talking about dentistry or data, decay is real, but it’s also very preventable. The concept of data decay refers to how the value of data The concept of data decay refers to how the value of data reduces over time. When we’re talking advertising and media - the timeframes are tiny, and the impact of the decay is huge.

2022-12-02 · 4 min
Operations

CTV Predictions for 2023

Last year gave us plenty of surprises, with global issues affecting life at every level, let alone the media industry. The is no doubt that these issues Predictions for the Connected TV (CTV) industry for 2023 by watching that monitoring platform

2022-11-18 · 5 min
Industry

How Did We Do? Our 2022 CTV Predictions Revisited

This time last year we made six predictions about what was going to happen in CTV this year (2022). Did we get it 🎯 spot on, in the right ⚾️ ball-park, or Watching That Predict the future for CTV Connected TV.

2022-11-10 · 3 min
Beyond the writing

The monitors in these posts are real. You can try one on your own ad server.

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