I started my career as developer in online media marketing domain, where I helped people build platforms to manage online traffic. After working for a few years, I moved to different domain like travel and Tourism, Health care, eCommerce etc and worked extensively with integration of third party web API's.
Recently, I joined a company that is into online advertising domain. It is a product-based company, which is into building product suit for online advertisers to help them run campaign on multiple channels like FB, Yahoo, Google, Outbain, taboola etc. Over and above that, It also provides analytical representation of performance of campaign on different channels.
Since I have moved to different domain after long, there were lot of surprises waiting for me. The first surprise came to me in the form of non-standardised API structure. Every provider has its own API structure, which means every time one adds a new provider codes need to be
written from start to end. Due to unavailability of standardized APIs, the integration and maintenance become overhead. In other domain like travel and health care we have OTA and HL7, respectively.
The above problem was overcome but there were another surprise in store for me - many providers have API but do not have sandbox facility. I tried long to figure out the reasons behind the absence of sandbox environment but could not. Sometimes, you fail to learn and, maybe, that happen with me as well.
One day, to my shock, I got an Invoice from a well-known advertising provider and a notice of suspension of service till we pay the amount as it was above our credit limit.
As the payment demand was of a hefty, we started investigating it. We found that the development team used live account credentials for application integration testing due to unavailability of sandbox. They forgot to turn off the campaign. As the campaign ran the invoice was generated.
This was like a one-sided war, where you have to fight the enemy on its terms for the rightful thing and, that too, after surrendering all your weapon to the enemy.
The question is: Why should a company, which don't have capabilities, build API? Is that the strategy to punish the potential customer if they are not getting converted to customer or, may be, something else.
The most frustrating part is that these provider company functions like a dictator, where the communication is one way and also top-down. They will reply to your queries at their will.
#FB, #Yahoo, #Outbrain, #taboola, #OnlineAdvertising, #OnlineCampaign, #OnlineMarketing, #DigitalMediaMarketing, #AdvertisingPlatform
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