Ad platform migration is one of those unavoidable necessities. Whether you’re replacing, upgrading or consolidating systems, you need a partner armed with the expertise to guide your data migration journey, every step of the way. At Theorem, we empower organizations to seamlessly and safely migrate data, without risk or complexity. In this white paper, we highlight five best practices to help you identify potential problems and map out a results-driven strategy to navigate your ad migration successfully. Discover how to: ✓ Automate the migration process ✓ Eliminate error-driven costs ✓ Support business needs ✓ … plus more

1. Avoiding the Pitfalls
Best Practices in Migrating to a
New Advertising Platform

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As the media business evolves and changes,
so too should the operational tools
that support the business.

3. Theorem www.theoreminc.net
Ad platform migration is one of those unavoidable necessities.
Whether you’re migrating your platform because of discontinua-
tion of your current service or because a different platform has
applications that suit current and future requirements, you must
make sure to identify poten-
tial problems, map out a clear
strategy, and line up the expert
help you’ll need.
The act of switching from one
platform to another involves many
moving parts, but the good news is
that it’s already been accomplished
many, many times by many, many
organizations. And their experiences can be channeled to build best practices
that will help you carry out a successful, stress-free migration.
Any successful migration plan has to take into account both strategic and
practical considerations. The first step should be to choose a platform
based on your organization’s specific business requirements. Once that
choice has been made, you’ll have to answer such questions as, Which
processes absolutely must remain unchanged? and, Where can we benefit
from process enhancement? One of the recommendations by migration
experts is to not overcomplicate the transition: if your current setup is
working for you, now isn’t the time to reinvent the wheel. Other key steps
include selection of a project manager—preferably someone who’s been
through the migration process several times before—and assembly of a
team and training the members.
Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform

4. Avoiding the Pitfalls
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21
Research
New Platform
Options
Create
New-Platform
Checklist
From a practical standpoint, you’ll want to think about a pilot or test period, consider how the
migration will affect your placements and your campaigns, and gather all of the major details that
must be included in the migration.
Following are five best practices to navigate your ad platform migration successfully.
Theorem’s Five Best Practices
to Navigate your Ad Platform Migration Successfully.

5. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
T W O • T H R E E
3 4 5
Align
the Business
Behind the Platform
Set
the Course
Practice,
Practice,
Practice

6. With the decision to migrate to a new platform made—either by choice or
by necessity—the first step should be to research which platform would
best suit your needs both now and in the future. You have to be certain that
the new platform offers all the features you’re looking for: Does it support ad
formats that you require or prefer to use? Does it support targeting options
and key values?
Moving to a new platform provides the opportunity to upgrade to a cleaner
and easier user interface. Adopting a friendly user interface can give your
Do Your Research
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7. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
F O U R • F I V E
business an advantage because it would let many tasks be managed more
efficiently, such as duplication of line items rather than having to create
them manually each time. Another important issue is to have a forward-look-
ing, next-generation platform. Questions you should answer during your
research are, Will the platform be able to integrate desired platforms in the
future, such as programmatic, data reporting, and customer relationship
management?
An important consideration
is to have a forward-looking,
next-generation platform.

8. Avoiding the Pitfalls
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As you prepare to migrate
to a new ad platform, define
your must-have list.

9. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
S I X • S E V E N
As you prepare to migrate to a new ad platform, it’s important to define your
must-have list by answering the questions, What must be brought from the
old platform? What should be replaced? and, Where can we make quick wins?
Make a list of the details on the ad servers involved in the migration. Here
are some areas to consider:
• Number of ads and number of campaigns.
• Information about your advertisers and the campaign and business details
that will have to be migrated, such as billing details and points of contact.
• Start and end dates, number of impressions remaining, budget, line items,
and other details.
• Don’t forget geotargeting information, such as sites, zones, and countries.
• The creative and the tags are also important, so be sure to account for
different formats. Include in your list the creative assets that will have to
be uploaded—including the proper landing-page URL—because you might
not be able to copy all of these.
When catalogs move to a new platform, it’s possible they’ll get represented
in an unfamiliar way. Make sure the way they appear fits with your business
practices, and make any necessary adjustments.
Do completed campaigns and expired ads have to be migrated, too? Make
sure they’re on your list. And just as important, make a list of properties and
items that aren’t going to be migrated.
Preparing for and carrying out all of these activities requires a commitment
of time and resources. In addition, those involved in the migration should be
given clear guidance on how and where ads have to appear. They must be
given the opportunity to test out all those different media, such as display,
video, and mobile.
Create Your New-Platform Checklist
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Once you’ve prepared that checklist, make sure the right team is on board
and that you’ve included all stakeholders. Do your team members have the
resources required to perform the migration? Have you allocated a quali-
ty control team to ensure the migration meets prerequisite development
requirements?
How about your order management process? Is it highly effective, or are you
bogged down by sign-off problems from different parts of the organization?
Your internal teams will only be as effective as their knowledge of the sys-
tem allows, so devote time to training everyone involved in the migration, as
well as end users. Beyond the operations team, you should prepare those
on the advertising side, your sales reps, those who maintain your Web site,
and other partners. Find out what each one of those stakeholders needs to
know about the new platform and how it operates, and provide them with
training materials or user’s manuals.
Make sure everyone knows about the migration plan—particularly your
firm’s agency and advertising clients. And to ease the transition, prepare
your systems engineers in advance and as quickly as possible for any up-
grades or modifications to the platform user interface.
Align the Business Behind the Platform
3
Make sure the right team is
on board and that you’ve
included all stakeholders.

11. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
E I G H T • N I N E

12. The way you migrate
your inventory may
depend to some de-
gree on your chosen
platform.
The way you migrate your inventory may depend to some degree on your
chosen platform. Some platforms might allow a simple transfer of data by
using their application programming interface (API); other platforms might
require a more manual migration. In the case of a manual migration, teams
will need to enter all details into a spreadsheet—including line item attri-
butes—in order to manually create those attributes in the new platform,
which will create extended timelines.
In most cases, an automated solution is best. Automated tools, which utilize
the APIs available through the platforms, extract ad campaigns from one
server and upload the campaigns to the new server. This process should
begin at least several weeks prior to when the migration kicks off. In terms
of planning, teams will need to:
• Determine how current tags will be configured on the new server.
• Monitor the migration to ensure everything is transferring correctly.
• Troubleshoot and correct campaigns that may fail to upload.
• QA the migration by choosing samples to ensure the quality is as expected.
Set the Course
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13. If there were road-
blocks, now is the
time to resolve such
issues rather than
wait until you’re in
full migration mode.
You may be eager to get settled on the new platform, but migrating all cam-
paigns right away would likely cause problems. Instead, begin with a pilot
by choosing a couple of standard campaigns to start; a pilot is important if
you’re opting for an API migration. Make sure that every step in the pilot is
properly documented, that the ads are performing as expected, and that you
always perform a quality assurance check to simplify the full migration later.
If possible, bring a client in to test out that client’s campaigns and make sure
the campaigns are running as expected.
Once you’ve successfully migrated more-standard campaigns, test the
more-complex, specialized ones to find out whether the platform is robust
enough to manage all types of campaigns. Track placements, and test them
in a live environment to verify the platform would support your needs.
Before full migration, make sure the platform performs as required, and if
not, determine what the problems are. If there were roadblocks—say you’re
having difficulty in migrating a particular section to the new platform—now
is the time to bring in your engineers to resolve such issues rather than wait
until you’re in full migration mode.
Practice, Practice, Practice
5
Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
T E N • E L E V E N

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Theorem www.theoreminc.net
We are digital performance experts, accelerating growth and driving operational efficiencies for organizations across
the digital ecosystem. Through a full suite of advisory, operational and technical solutions, Theorem helps organizations
unlock new sources of value – allowing clients to maximize returns from digital channels much faster and at scale.
Theorem optimizes digital efforts by seeing the full picture—getting clients on the right path and overcoming all obsta-
cles along the way. For more information, visit us at www.theoreminc.net
© 2017 Theorem, Inc. All rights reserved. THEOXX_022817
973 665 1700 I www.theoreminc.net
26 Main Street, Chatham, New Jersey
Before finally retiring your old platform, check that you haven’t missed any-
thing—for instance, whether old campaigns, historical data, special cam-
paigns run as one-offs, or any other content could be important in the future.
And don’t forget that your new platform provider needs feedback about what
is and isn’t working—especially in the early months.
Migration to a new platform doesn’t have to slow you down, but adopting
and applying best practices and taking a methodical approach can save time
and help you avoid needless mistakes.
Now It’s Time to Migrate
Migration to a new plat-
form doesn’t have to slow
you down, but applying best
practices can save you time.

15. Best Practices in Migrating to a New Advertising Platform
F O U R • F I V E
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