OAO Is Now adops.com, But The Real Story Is What It Means For All Of Us
If you were at Navigator NYC this morning, you heard Craig Leshen, CEO of adops.com (formerly OAO or “Outsourced Ad Ops”), kick things off with a question:
“What’s the opportunity I’m not seeing because I’m so used to operating in chaos?”
Now, a lot of people in this industry like to open with a big question. Most of them don’t really want an answer.
Craig does.
Why? Well, if you’ve worked with OAO, you know the deal. For years, Craig’s team has been the group that sits inside the stack. Not a vendor on the outside. Not a one-off integration shop. The team that connects publisher goals to partner platforms and makes the whole thing actually work. They’ve helped publishers recover revenue, streamline ops, and stay ahead of whatever ad tech decides to throw at them next. At the same time, they’ve been the reason a lot of partner tools actually get adopted in the first place.
Today, they stopped standing behind it.
Craig announced that OAO is now adops.com. Which, let’s be honest, is the kind of rebrand that turns heads in this industry. But here’s the part that matters: this isn’t a marketing play. It’s a signal. The name’s not about them. It’s about what they stand for.
Ad ops isn’t an afterthought. It isn’t a ticket queue. It’s where the money comes from. And it’s time people started treating it that way.
So after he got off stage, we sat down to go deeper. Less about the name, more about what it means. And why this moment (this rebrand, this shift) isn’t just overdue. It’s necessary.
Here’s what Craig had to say.
ROB: Why was now the right moment to drop OAO and step into adops.com?
CRAIG: Because it’s not about us anymore.
We’ve been in this game for over twenty years. Long enough to know that the story we were telling (Outsourced Ad Ops) was no longer the story that needed to be told. That phrase of outsourced ad ops? It made us sound like a vendor. Like a bolt-on. And that’s never been the role we’ve played.
But more importantly, this is about the industry. For too long, ad ops has been treated as a back-office function. The work is essential, the pressure is enormous, and yet, too often, it’s invisible. This rebrand is our way of saying: “That stops now.”
We didn’t just drop a word from our name. We claimed a space. adops.com is more than a domain. It’s a declaration. It says this work deserves to be front and center. That the people doing it deserve recognition, investment, and a seat at the table. We’re putting the entire function of ad ops back where it belongs: at the heart of publisher success.
So why now? Because the timing’s right. Because the chaos isn’t going away. And because in moments of chaos, you don’t need more buzzwords. You need clarity. You need someone who knows the work, lives the work, and shows up to actually do the work.
That’s who we’ve always been. This rebrand just makes it impossible to miss.
ROB: What’s the opportunity the industry is still blind to when it comes to ad ops?
CRAIG: The opportunity is sitting right in front of us. And it’s not a tool, or a platform.
It’s the people.
If you work in this space (publisher, partner, wherever) you’ve built a muscle for operating in chaos. The pace, the pressure, the moving targets… that’s our normal. And when you get so used to surviving that way, it’s easy to stop asking: Could we be doing more than just keeping the lights on?
That’s why I asked that question. Because ad ops is often seen as the team that catches everything when it breaks. But what if we stopped treating them like the last line of defense—and started treating them like the front line of innovation?
What if we didn’t just support ad ops? What if we empowered them?
Not just with better tech or more hands, but with the trust to lead. With the visibility to influence. With the mandate to drive change, not just react to it. Because that’s what’s already happening in the best orgs. The ad ops teams that are truly empowered, they’re not just solving problems. They’re preventing them. They’re improving yield, optimizing strategy, and making the whole operation smarter.
This isn’t about calling anyone out. It’s about calling something forward.
So the question is: What would your business look like if you centered those people? If you gave them not just responsibility, but agency? Because the industry’s not missing some magic fix. It’s just underestimating the power of the team it already has.
ROB: You’ve shared with me that this isn’t just a rebrand, it’s a wake-up call. What exactly are you trying to wake the industry up to?
CRAIG: Well, I’ve already said it, but it’s that ad ops shouldn’t be kept behind the scenes.
As a publisher, your ad ops team connects what gets promised on a sales deck to what actually gets delivered on the page. They’re the team that navigates platforms, policies, privacy, reporting, and revenue… and still finds a way to move the needle. But they’re rarely in the room when decisions are made. They’re rarely the ones getting the investment. And that needs to change.
This rebrand isn’t about saying, “Look at us.” It’s about saying, “Look at this.” Look at the function that’s holding the revenue operation together. Look at the people solving problems no one else even sees coming. Look at the layer of the business that’s been undervalued for far too long.
Because ad ops doesn’t just fix what’s broken. When it’s done right (when it’s supported, resourced, and given the space to lead) it actually prevents problems. It drives outcomes. It protects revenue and enables growth.
So when I say it’s a wake-up call, I mean for all of us. Publishers, partners, platforms. Even with the best of intentions, we’ve sometimes begun treating ad ops like a cost center, when it’s been functioning as a revenue engine all along.
This isn’t just a new name. It’s a new lens. And the faster we shift how we see this work (and the people doing it) the stronger this industry gets.
ROB: I want to go deeper on something you said earlier. You dropped “outsourced” from the name, can you talk more about that?
CRAIG: Frankly, because we’ve seen what happens when “outsourced” goes wrong. The term itself isn’t the problem. Outsourcing, when done right, can be smart, strategic, even transformational. But too often in this industry, it hasn’t been done right. And we’ve been brought in too many times to clean up the fallout from that.
We’ve seen publishers burned by partners who overpromised and underdelivered. Who didn’t learn the business. Who treated everything like a ticket, not a relationship. We’ve seen teams waste weeks re-explaining the same issues. We’ve seen critical campaign mistakes, broken QA, and no accountability when things went sideways.
That’s not how we work.
At adops.com, we’re external, but we act like we’re in-house. We’re white glove, but we’re always ready to get our hands dirty. We carry institutional knowledge. We build real relationships. We bring stability, execution, and proactive support into workflows that are already running hot.
So when we dropped the word, it wasn’t a marketing move. It was a message to the industry:
This isn’t about handing off work and hoping for the best.
This is about partnership with standards.
And it’s time for the bar to be higher.
That’s what adops.com stands for. We’re not just offering hands. We’re offering judgment, consistency, and execution that actually works. That’s the difference.
ROB: Ad ops often ends up being the place where breakdowns in the industry become visible… whether it’s tech, process, or communication. Why does that happen, and what needs to change?
CRAIG: Ad ops is where all the complexity comes to land.
You’ve got sales pushing deals across the finish line. You’ve got platforms rolling out changes on their own timelines. You’ve got multiple vendors, multiple systems, and a monetization model that shifts weekly. And right in the middle of all of it? That’s where ad ops lives.
It’s not that ad ops is the problem. It’s that it’s where the problems show up.
Execution gets treated like a postscript. Something to figure out after the strategy is set. And yet, if that last mile doesn’t work, nothing does. The campaign doesn’t run right. The revenue doesn’t show up. The reports don’t reconcile. That’s not a team issue. That’s a system issue.
The fix starts with rethinking how we treat ad ops in the first place.
This isn’t just a production function. It’s where performance happens. And if we want to stop seeing the same breakdowns over and over again, we need to bring ad ops into the conversation sooner, and support them more deeply once they’re in it.
That means:
Giving them a seat at the table when deals and tech are being scoped.
Building workflows that are collaborative, not siloed.
And investing in the people, tools, and partners that can actually execute against the complexity we’re all navigating.
At adops.com, we’ve built our model around that belief. We don’t treat ad ops like the end of the process. We treat it like the engine room. The place where it all comes together, or doesn’t. And we show up accordingly: with context, with accountability, and with a deep understanding that execution isn’t extra; it’s everything.
ROB: How do you serve both publishers and partners without losing focus?
CRAIG: When people hear “we serve both publishers and partners,” the assumption is that we’re trying to split the difference. But that’s not how it works. We’re not balancing two sides. We’re sitting inside the stack where everything meets, and making sure it runs.
We’re not here to broker relationships or hand off integration docs. We’re the team that connects publisher goals to partner platforms, in the real-world conditions where execution either happens… or doesn’t.
That means for publishers, we’re unlocking revenue, streamlining workflows, fixing what breaks, and building systems that scale. And for partners? We’re putting your products to use—properly, consistently, and in a way that drives retention.
This isn’t about being neutral. It’s about being embedded.
Everything we do is built around publisher outcomes. That’s our filter. That’s our focus. But to deliver on that, we can’t just understand the tech. We have to make it perform across different stacks, setups, and partner environments. That’s the job.
So how do we serve both sides? By being the execution layer that keeps everyone honest. The part of the system that doesn’t blink, bail, or break when things get messy.
We don’t split the difference.
We connect it.
And we’d like to think that adops.com is where both publishers and partners can win.
ROB: Let’s come back to the question you opened Navigator NYC with: “What’s the opportunity I’m not seeing because I’m so used to operating in chaos?” Let’s sit with that for a second. For the people still holding that question, what would you want to say to them now?
CRAIG: I’d say good. Hold onto it. Because if you’ve been in this space long enough, chaos feels normal. You’re holding a leaky stack together with duct tape and Slack messages. And if everything runs, it’s a win. Until it isn’t.
But here’s the truth. This industry got too comfortable surviving. And we started calling that success.
That’s why we rebranded. Because we’ve been building the better way for years, and now we’re putting our name on it. We’re not a footnote. We’re not behind the scenes. We’re the team inside the stack fixing what breaks, before it breaks. And it’s time the industry saw that for what it is: the center of revenue, not the edge of it.
So if you’re still holding that question, “What’s the opportunity I’m not seeing because I’m so used to the chaos?”
Don’t ignore it.
That question is the doorway. That’s how this starts.
And we’re here to help.
You know where to find us.
That’s not just a rebrand.
That’s adops.com.