Based on my many years in ad tech, I’ve developed 24 laws of ad tech product management. These are “laws”, meaning they are always true, everywhere.
1. If you add something to targeting, it also must be in reporting.
2. The answer to the question “Do you need to forecast this?” is always yes.
3. The answer to “Is this forecast working well?” is always no.
4. If you give an agency customer two options, they will always choose “both.”
5. There can never be enough levels of your object hierarchy.
6. If you add a short-cut to extend your product hierarchy (like a “tag” feature), it is inevitable that the customer will want it fully permissioned like a real level of your object hierarchy.
7. There’s nothing more important to your customers than macros.
8. CTR is like cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, it has to be on the table.
9. The Europeans are always unhappy.
10. The Asians are also always unhappy, but they may not tell you.
11. Your UI malfunctions are likely caused by the end user installing an ad blocker.
12. Your support team will build features that customers actually want but that the product team can’t build.
13. The product team will end up having to maintain the features built by the support team.
14. Someone in your org is going to suggest you create a “lite” or “express” version of your product.
15. Someone in your org is going to suggest replacing your object hierarchy with a “wizard”.
16. Every partner integrated into your UI will change their company name, sometimes twice.
17. You will have to integrate with Operative.
18. You will have to integrate with MediaOcean.
19. You will not be able to explain to anyone what MediaOcean does except that it is really important.
20. If there’s a hard problem, it will spawn a new industry group.
21. If there’s a new industry group, you’re going to be charged $5,000/year to participate.
22. If someone says they aren’t fingerprinting, they are most assuredly fingerprinting.
23. If someone says they are GDPR compliant they are most assuredly not GDPR compliant
24. Dashboards make everyone happy.