Tim Nichols is the Principal Media Director at Exact Drive (they offer a suite of online advertising services). We recently spoke with Tim about his experience and a newly launched partnership.

The Makegood: Tim, how did you get into digital media advertising?

TN: Almost 10 years ago I was working at a leading Fortune 500 company. I was working on the operational team given the responsibility of streamlining the redundant teams and procedures as a result of a major acquisition that recently took place. While eating lunch, an article in the New York Times caught my eye. It was discussing the benefits of advertising on the Internet and the increasing popularity of digital media advertising in general. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, I found this article to be rather intriguing. After conducting some additional research, I shared my findings and thoughts with my brother. Shortly after we decided to become business partners and we jumped head first into the digital media advertising pool. Almost 10 years later, we have people in Minneapolis, MN, Austin, TX, Phoenix AZ and Washington D.C. and we are still as passionate and excited as the first day we started.

The Makegood: As the Principal Media Director at Exact Drive, what does your role entail?

TN: Every week seems to bring about new tasks that require a slightly different hat to be worn. That said, at the end of the day the core responsibility of my role involves managing the media buying and planning needs of our clients and partners.

These needs can involve many things, such as carefully deciding ad placement strategies by using various analytical models, ensuring client budgets are met, target audiences are reached and we are maximizing performance to generate real value. With several hundred campaigns under management, this is a multifaceted, fast moving role that involves managing both a team and the proper utilization of our proprietary media planning and buying application. I am kept very busy but I absolutely enjoy the work.

The Makegood: Exact Drive provides campaign planning, management and optimization services. How does this process work for a typical client?

TN: We work with clients and partners throughout all stages of the media buying and planning process. Many times a client or partner comes to us with a media plan already in hand and we facilitate only the media buying part through our buying platform. Other times we are approached with a want and desire to grow an online presence and reach more customers. This means we will work with the client before, during and after their campaign launches to maximize results. This approach will include research, creative design and strategic planning pre-campaign, media buying, campaign management, fulfillment and optimization during the campaign and reporting and analysis post campaign.

The Makegood: Recently, Exact Drive partnered with ad design platform, Canned Banners, to offer a one-stop solution for launching and managing dynamic display ad campaigns. Can you tell us about the benefits of this new offering?

TN: Offering simpler tools for easier online advertising is a big passion at Exact Drive. We want to mix strategic expertise and innovative insight with proprietary and useful Internet marketing tools and technologies. We have accomplished this goal with our media planning and buying application and our partnership with Canned Banners allows us to continue down this path when it comes to designing, launching and managing dynamic display ads.

We want our clients and partners to be able to speak to their potential customers as unique individuals, not be limited to generalized audience messaging with ‘one size fits all’ ads. Our partnership with Canned Banners not only accomplishes this goal but also increases the performance and precision of display ad campaigns by personalizing ad creative in real time for each viewer.

It’s a very powerful offering and we are excited to be rolling it out to the market and to our existing clients and partners.

A basic demo and additional information can be found at the following destination: http://www.exactdrive.com/dynamic-ads

The Makegood: Thanks, Tim.

This article was originally published by Katie Bronnenkant on March 30, 2012 at The-Makegood.com