Gabrielė Vileikytė is an example of a curious and ambitious mind that is relevant in Eskimi. Although she graduated from political science, she has been responsible for managing ad operations in the international company for 2,5 years already. Gabrielė highly values learning and mastering new skills—and working on the same position is not an obstacle to reach for it.
Same position, constant change
Eskimi Ad Ops Manager says that although her position has remained the same, her responsibilities changed a lot. “They are way more diverse. At first, I did mainly technical and analytical tasks like campaign setup, optimization, reports, and communication with clients. However, after some time, I felt I could do more. Now I’m also responsible for process improvement, seeking new creative solutions and opportunities on how we could scale the business. My knowledge and activities grew significantly,” says Gabrielė.
When she started her career in Eskimi, Gabrielė had no encounter with programmatic advertising—before she had worked with Google and Facebook. Ad ops manager is happy how she broadened her knowledge about programmatic and its ecosystem. “I also noticeably improved in the technical field, learned about HTML and back-end processes—what’s going on under the hood. But the most important—my understanding has changed how the system should work. The view became way more open in problem-solving: I can find many different viewpoints and solutions for a difficult case,” shares Gabrielė.
Growing together with the company
Along with her professional growth, the ad manager team has also grown more than double. When Gabrielė came to Eskimi, her team included 5-6 people. For comparison, now she works with around 14 team members. Four of them are located in Bangladesh, two in Nigeria, one is in Kazakhstan and the rest are settled in Lithuania. However, the team spirit is strong. “Our team leader seeks to maintain strong internal communication. We have joint calls every week and keep in touch. Our team is great: we share the good practices, what works best, what could be better,” Gabrielė shares her thoughts on the importance of close team relationships.
Communicating with many other departments, such as sales, account managers, IT, and others, Gabrielė has a great opportunity to see the overall growth of Eskimi. Also, she can initiate novelties. “New platforms and new implementations come from communication with other platforms and sharing best practices. For example, recently, I talked to people from Tumblr,” says Gabrielė.
Managing ad operations from A to Z
How does her main task—ad management—look? Gabrielė described the whole process of managing a campaign. “Sales team reaches us for a new campaign. Sometimes before launch, they ask us for insights on targeting, prices, and so on,” Gabrielė shares the process. “It happens we participate in campaign planning, but usually, the sales team provide us with a brief. Then the campaign is set up, optimized, and after its end, we send a report and recommendations for further work.”
The ad ops manager has an active schedule. Depending on the month, she has to manage about 100 campaigns at once. Usually, Gabrielė works with 20-25 active accounts that run several campaigns. Overall, fifteen people in Eskimi launch around 1000 campaigns per month. “I think that is a big scale. Other companies often split up the process—some people are responsible only for optimization, some for reports. We are responsible for multiple accounts from A to Z, from planning to invoicing. And that’s great—I don’t feel like a screw in the system, I can see the impact of my work and how it helps for the company,” opens up Gabrielė.
Eskimi: the place to learn and innovate
Feeling useful is a very natural human need—and the ad manager enjoys this feeling. Gabrielė says she likes that the company is not so big, “somehow keeping the start-up vibe,” and there always is a possibility to co-create or own something—a project or a campaign. “In Eskimi, it’s very easy to offer and implement new solutions. I’m very motivated by looking for new ones,” she is excited about novelties. Working on diverse activities also develops new skills and provides a return for the company: a person grows faster and can deal with more responsibilities, to manage the communication, to act in critical situations, to find solutions and arguments.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the ad ops manager is keen on learning, and it seems the company is the place for her. “I value Eskimi as an endless opportunity to grow—working here, I know that my peak of knowledge is very far away. Sometimes you may think that you are on top of your game—you have worked with different markets, clients, you know a lot. Then, suddenly, you face a tricky case, and you start the learning process again. I like it very much as I appreciate this opportunity to learn new skills, as well as a space to implement them,” says Gabrielė.
