Interview with an Expert: Full Transcript

Andrew Cederlind, Director of Operations at AdsUpNow, has over 4 years of experience in marketing and advertising. He specializes in SMB marketing and advertising, online marketing, and project management. Andrew holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism/Public Relations from Western Washington University. Team Adbusters chose to talk to Andrew for our expert interview due to his role at AdsUpNow, a fast-growing digital advertising agency that has collaborated with Google and Bing. Our hope was to learn more about his work and get his opinion on issues related to targeted advertising (adblockers, privacy concerns).

To listen to the interview, click here. Enjoy the full transcript below.

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MP = an Adbuster

AC = Andrew Cederlind

MP: This is an interview for a research team studying targeted advertising in a class on technological development, HCDE 300 A. My name is [birth name] and I’m here today with Andrew Cederlind, the Director of Operations for AdsUpNow for more information on his work. Mr. Cederlind, [AC: oh yeah?] how did you get started in advertising?

AC: I got started in advertising I came on here five and a half years ago, a recent college grad, actually, looking for copyrighting work. Content writing, things like that. And I started out writing ad copies and basically learned more of everything, and slowly moved up the ranks from there. Now I run the operational show, so to speak.

MP: Can you go deeper into what you do for the company?

AC: Yeah, so basically we do a variety of different campaigns. Google search ad works campaign, we just find keywords for different companies and it shows in search results. We often do a variety of different display campaigns, which is where the targeted factor comes in. Those were on Facebook, and all the other ads that just show up on the Internet. We also do e-mail and a bit of web development. Really my job is just to make sure that everything is doing what it’s supposed to do. So we have a couple hundred clients, with lots of different campaigns for each one, so it’s just a matter of, “hey...these things need to be updated” or just a matter of going in and analyzing how the campaign is working, are they seeing good results? Is it successful or not successful? It’s all just working with a client to get their goal accomplished. It ranges from selling shoes, or just building a line up of a certain sale, or trying to sell a car, build apartment complexes and get new leases, that sort of thing.

MP: Okay, what kind of programming languages or technology are necessary for this job?

AC: There’s actually not a lot of programming languages. I think it’s good to have a knowledge, a kind of working knowledge. You know, I don’t have any sort of programming skills. I have working knowledge of HTML. It’s just kind of, really making sure that there’s nothing wrong with certain websites or any ad. It’s really just making sure there’s nothing wrong with the HTML of our ad or any animations. As far as technology goes there’s an awful lot of technology we need, especially for display advertising you buy through what’s called a DSP which is a demand side platform. A demand side platform basically taps into the backbone of the online ad options. So there are all of these super smart people that have built these algorithms to bid on the inventory of every advertisement that you see, if it’s not hand placed. Very rarely anymore do you see hand placed ads. They’re all done at an auction, and so that ad pricing was bid on by who knows how many different people. The highest bidder won. So we might be bidding on the impressions because they [the consumer] are in the market to buy a car, so the advertiser would be bidding on that because they found that they recently purchased a house, so they’re trying to sell them a roof or new gutters or whatever. The underlying technology we don’t actually build, we buy into different demand side platforms that have done the heavy lifting for us.

MP: What is your opinion on targeted advertising and privacy? Are there any ethics issues that come up in your work?

AC: Yeah I think that, actually you might have seen the recent lawsuit against Vizeo for spying on people through their smart tvs. There’s a definite line that shouldn’t be crossed there. I think that if advertising is done right, that it shouldn’t invade someone’s privacy. Hopefully a targeted ad gives you something that’s relevant to you. It’s a wingman. When we go through these emerging technologies obviously with the whole voice thing coming out and connecting to our home, there are going to be a lot of things connected to our lives. The balance there is that we would like to do things that are a wingman. In our minds, when someone is searching for a new car, looking for a new car to buy, we show them a great deal this weekend that is literally only happening for the next 6 days. And then we push them over to the other company to get a car. They got a great deal, the dealer sold a car, it’s win/win. We don’t like to be in a situation where we’re serving standard ads, pop ups, anything that’s going to harm the user experience I guess? Obviously a lot of people are doing ad blocking these days. Because, the industry hasn’t done a very good job of finding a balance. And hopefully, now that people are ad blocking more and more it will kind of trim down the number of ad placements and the quality of the ads themselves. So I think that there’s definite privacy- there can be privacy issues. What we do isn’t really identifiable, it’s more of an anonymous online profile. With Facebook and Google you can login and see what people have collected about you. Maybe collected isn’t the best word. What they sort of have, the targeted information on you, so Facebook will tell you “hey here’s the interests we have for you”. They added those things you post, things you like, and that builds a profile that we can target more effectively.

MP: How does your company work around ad blockers?

AC: We don’t! When you block an ad it becomes undeliverable, so basically when a bid goes out, we just don’t bid on that person because there’s no request for a bid, the ad impression is blocked. We haven’t really seen a drop in being able to fulfil impressions or anything.

MP: What do you enjoy the most about your job?

AC: I think the thing I enjoy the most is, like I said before, we kind of like to think of ourselves as the agency that cares. So we’re not just trying to - I think a lot of people have a negative view of advertising, but when it’s done properly, I think it can really be a win/win for both the consumer and for the business. I think my favorite thing is that we really see win/win tasks all the time. I think that’s actually really rewarding. We work with a lot of local businesses , they sell barbeques, hot tubs, and things like that and they start to be able to say “hey we had a great weekend these are real people in our community that are trying to make a living selling whatever it is their store is selling”, and we can help them make a living have a good sales weekend and then hopefully the consumer got a good deal on whatever they were buying because there was an event going on, that’s probably the thing I like the most.

[MP thanks AC and reiterates that the interview's transcript and audio will be shared on the Team Adbusters website. AC requested a copy of the interview's MP3 file.]

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