Online advertising is constantly changing. The “New Rules of ( insert ad network here ) Marketing” are already out of date. Just going heads down on a project for a couple of weeks can cause you to miss out on game-changing feature rollouts, new ad types and a shift in industry best practices.

The “New Rules of ( insert ad network here ) Marketing” are already out of date.

In this series, I’ll teach you how to stay informed and in the loop so you can take advantage of the current trends in the ad space and keep from drowning amidst the flood of changes.

Pro-tip: Sign up here and I'll email you a weekly roundup of news, trends & strategies.

Change in This Industry Is Constant

The ad networks are constantly changing. I didn't fully appreciate this fact until I began working with the engineers at AdStage where we're constantly negotiating through changes in the ad network APIs. While you may hear about earth-shattering changes like Enhanced Campaigns, there's a huge amount of significant PPC news that can go unnoticed to you, but require immediate attention from us. Blink and you’ll miss the opportunity.

You Need to Leverage the Experts

Once you hear about a change that's relevant to you, you’ll need to learn how to use it. But ad network documentation can be pretty bad… consisting of marketing copy rather than real-world help.

This content and commentary will help you stay sane and navigate ad network changes like a pro.

Fortunately, there’s a healthy supply of online marketers with great ideas about how you can take advantage of these changes. And because they're marketers, they know the value of sharing their ideas through social media and content marketing. So soak up the how-tos, op-eds, memes, tweets, etc. This content and commentary will help you stay sane and navigate these changes like a pro.

How I'd Collect Advice From Experts

For Myself

When I managed paid acquisition in-house for an e-commerce website in a highly competitive industry, I used RSS feeds to queue up a steady stream of PPC news and resources for my professional development. Whenever I needed to take a break from staring at data, I'd load up the next article in my Google Reader (RIP) .

This gave me a wide breadth of industry knowledge, sparked creativity and out-of-the-box strategies, and kept me informed about newly-released features that gave me a significant edge on my competitors utilizing PPC agencies for their campaigns. (No disrespect to agencies, but I experienced first-hand the benefits of devoting an in-house marketer to non-stop optimization). As my team grew, I’d onboard new hires with the same RSS feed so they could stay up to date on current strategies as well.

For Google

When I moved on to Google, I began putting together a roundup of industry news for the AdWords & DoubleClick product teams so they could stay in the loop. While there were some awkward weeks when the roundup was flooded with articles bemoaning Enhanced Campaigns, the majority was pretty fun to put together. It was a great feeling sending articles praising new features to the very product managers and engineers that worked so hard developing it! It also kept me informed, even though I had transitioned out of day-to-day campaign management.

An example of the roundup I'd put together for Google

For You

When I came to AdStage, I started sending a weekly news roundup to our team internally. At the suggestion of my CEO (a brilliant marketer himself), we branded this newsletter as This Week in Ad Tech and began sending it out every week to customers that had signed up for the AdStage beta or our AdWords Reporting App for iPad .

Check out an archive of past issues of This Week in Ad Tech here and sign up to receive a new issue in your inbox every week.

An example of This Week in Ad Tech

You'll appreciate that I manually curate the flood of articles and resources every week to put the roundup together. It includes first-party content from the AdStage blog , along with industry news, how-tos, and industry trends.

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