Bill Dennett is head of regional sales, UK and Ireland, for Ozone, a digital advertising platform built for brands by premium publishers.
The platform was founded by News UK, Telegraph Media Group, Reach PLC and Guardian News & Media to provide advertisers with easy, streamlined access to premium audiences at scale.
Operating out of Ozone’s Manchester hub, Dennett works with dedicated regional sales and client services specialists. He works closely with the wider Ozone team in London to ensure the company’s culture and tight-knit teamwork extends throughout the regions.
Here, he shares a glimpse into a recent week in his life.
Monday
Every Monday morning I dial into our ‘Start of Week’ meeting to kick-start the week ahead. This is an opportunity to catch up with colleagues across agency and client sales, client services, strategic solutions, trading and marketing. As always, there’s a lot of content to get through, but our primary focus is always on the work we’re doing for our clients and the results we’ve delivered for them.
In addition to this, today we had an extra update on some of our seasonal Christmas and Cost of Living insights from Frances and Alex from our Strategic Solutions and Insights team. Thanks to the unique single view we have of reader behaviour across our publisher partners, there’s always a new story and angle – it’s a must to pay attention, as our clients love these insights too.
It’s then off to Wavemaker North to meet our key agency partners for lunch – I love nothing better than getting under the skin of their challenges and identifying how Ozone can help them. Today, a lot of our conversation centred around transparency in digital advertising – luckily as one of Ozone’s key principles, it’s something I’m well versed in talking about.
Tuesday
It’s an early rise today, as I get on the road and make a trip to Birmingham to meet with some of our agency favourites. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to meet with clients across the breadth of the entire country as each meeting and every new agency adds a new perspective to the work we’re doing. And it keeps the work very varied – for example, today I pitched Ozone to someone who had never heard of us, then followed that with another client meeting about a live campaign and how that’s performing.
I definitely think the advertising industry is increasingly recognising the need to break out of the London bubble. This is not only important for attracting great talent, but it helps us all better understand the interests and challenges of the millions of people across the UK who don’t live in the capital. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s why we’re seeing so many regional agencies flourish.
Wednesday
It’s another day of responding to briefs from our agency partners. With every brief received, I feel our clients have an even greater understanding of the role of Ozone as a premium audience alternative – or indeed complement – to some of the other major platforms that they deal with. It’s sometimes easy to forget we’ve only just celebrated our first five years, meaning a huge part of the job is still educating our clients on our platform’s capabilities.
With brief responses emailed out, it’s time to join a timeTo training session with the NABS Committee, something I’ve been keen to do as I wasn’t able to make either of the two in-person sessions Ozone has run to date. When it comes to NABS, I’m really passionate about supporting their agenda across the regions, working alongside a team of committed industry folk committed to delivering high level events and services to the regional advertising industry.
Wednesday evening I play pickleball at a local club. Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in America played by the likes of George Clooney and the Kardashians. I lose every game!
Thursday
We’ve got the entire regional team in the Manchester office today, including Dougie who’s usually based out of Glasgow, but is joining us as he’ll be down this way visiting his clients in Leeds. It is also our fortnightly Ozone town hall, and we dial in to hear more about what’s going on round the business. Today, Danny and Dipti put the focus on the latest Publisher Services’ developments – the part of Ozone that build tech, tools and services for our publisher partners – while Dora, our CSO, gives an update on our ECOzone programme and two current initiatives focused on carbon reduction across our platform and sustainability reporting for campaigns.
In the afternoon I pop out to present to the team at PHD Manchester. It’s great to hear about their clients’ challenges and the planning they’re currently undertaking, while keeping them up to date with the latest Ozone developments. We end the day with some drinks and a few games of shuffleboard.
Friday
A lot of Friday morning is spent tying up week-end reporting and a few bits of admin before the weekend kicks in. I then head into the city centre to do a number of venue visits with Bryan, our marketing director, who’s come up to Manchester for the day. We have a whistle-stop tour of six different spaces and, as luck would have it, the final venue is perfect for our next event – watch this space!
Then, it’s time to see Bryan off on the train – after a cheeky glass of wine, of course – before I head out to meet my wife for a meal in Manchester at one of our favourite restaurants. We have a quick chat about our weeks and then agree to switch off from work for the weekend. After all, the next one is only two days away!
