austinchristensenoath

[austinchristensenoath]

We had such a great Pride month thanks to all the help of the Prism members this year!! Couldn’t have done it without them! I love being a part of a company where we can celebrate Pride and other diversities in our world. I hope I get to stay with Oath as long as I can :)  

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I am really happy with how this website turned out for the Creative Solutions Management Team! I had been struggling for a while trying to figure out an eye-pleasing layout to house all of the important links and documents the CSM team needs to do their job flawlessly. By creating a simple chart with rows and columns I believe I’ve figured it out! Much more balanced and pleasing to look at! :) 

[austinchristensenoath]

Oath Continued, Continued!!

Hi everyone,

I apologize for how long it has been since I’ve last written. My previous blog mentioned my news about getting extended until the end of the year. Well, once again I have been extended! This time, until the end of June! So I will get to have a full year of experience working here at Oath! I am very thankful that my managers and co-workers still want to keep me around longer! :) 

This fall and winter have been filled with a tremendous amount of great experiences and more opportunities for me to grow as a professional. I was able to pitch our ACT website, that I put together for our external workings, on a Lead Call. Lead Calls are part of Oath’s way of letting internal teams talk about what is new at Oath and what we can provide for current and future clients. These occur every two weeks. Even though I was nervous, I was really excited to be part of the call and talk about what I created. I even had one of my managers compliment me on how well-spoken I was. That felt really good! 

Along with the Lead Call, I have also been taking on new cases and getting more CSM experience. What I love about getting a new case is that even though they are similar, there are always new things that I am learning. Each one is always a little bit different than the one I did before. It really makes the job more interesting. I would like to take on more cases now but I understand that we have a lot of full-time employees that need cases as well. So what I need to do is get better at researching more aspects of the CSM role and other roles in general. Or come up with fun/useful projects for our team and myself! 

There is honestly an endless amount of information that I can learn at Oath. Digital companies are much more complex than meets the eye. It’s a world I have always been interested in but never really thought I would work in it. It’s cool how going into the advertising field could give me exposure to the digital side of things and countless other facets as well. 

I’m excited for the year, 2018 and so is our company as a whole. Even though I may not be staying here past June, I will be able to take everything I’ve learned and channel that knowledge and experience into my next line of work. What’s nice about this field is that I can work anywhere. I just need to branch out and take risks. But I will always call Nebraska my home! <3

So cheers to a good year in 2017 and cheers to a potentially great year in 2018!! I got this!! :) 

[austinchristensenoath]

Found this on LinkedIn! Very nice message for marketing, sales and advertising peeps! 

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Throwback to the college world series game in Omaha with the ACT team from Oath! What a fun day! I had a blast! 

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Digging our new ACT logo for Oath!

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Don’t know why I didn’t post this earlier but I got a sweet headshot for our new company, Oath! Thank you photographers (whose names I don’t know)! 

[austinchristensenoath]

Oath continued!

Well folks, I have some great news! It has been confirmed that I will stay on with Oath as a full-time intern till the end of the year! I’d like to thank my... haha just kidding. But seriously, I am super grateful to stay on longer and gain more experience. I was a little worried leaving in September because there is still so much I want to get out of my internship but very little time. My manager, Christina, and her manager, Lindsay, are rockstars for making this happen. I’m so glad that they were in favor of me staying on longer when I asked about it. 

Along with getting the news about my extension, I also led my first case on the job! With a lot of help from my mentors, I have been quickly learning the ins and outs of managing a campaign from a Creative Solutions Manager (CSM) standpoint. Even though the training decks and documents have been extremely helpful it doesn’t quite match the experience you get when you are put in the position to do the work in real-life instead of reading about it. Since taking on my first case, I realize how much I still need to learn about the CSM role at Oath. Each case is usually just a little different so it constantly allows me to learn new things. I have a running list of new steps and processes that I write down after each case so I will remember for the next one. 

The team I work with makes me love this job. Being new to the team I still have to rely on them a lot but they are all so good at helping me figure out this role. They don’t make me feel like I am annoying them or asking dumb questions (which I’m sure I’ve done more than a few times lol). I hope that when I get to the point where I’m a mentor I can help my mentee as much as this group has helped me! 

I’m excited to see how the next months go and what new challenges I’ll be faced with. I’m ready to tackle them head on. 

Until next time! :) 

[austinchristensenoath]

The new company I work for! 

[austinchristensenoath]

At the 3 Month Mark!

Finally back to making a post of my internship experience! Gosh it’s been almost three months now that I’ve been working at this office. Things are now clicking a lot more than they used to at the beginning. The amount of experience I’ve been getting in the world of digital advertising is amazing. But there is still so much to learn. I think I’m getting a pretty solid high level understanding of how our systems and processes work. To add to the mix, we have been integrating systems from Yahoo and AOL for the past month. AOL’s systems will still take some more time getting used to but I hope to have a high level understanding of their side before I leave next month as well! 

I just recently finished my internship project with three other interns at Oath. This project was a deep dive for an advertiser of Oath, Gold’s Gym. The goal of this project was to research Gold’s Gym and figure out ways to get this client to spend more money with our company by increasing the amount of advertising spend they currently have with us. This project allowed me to talk to so many departments within the digital advertising sector of Oath and build my knowledge base as well as networking with other employees. I even learned how to use multiple insight and advertising platforms to gather the information we needed for our deep dive project. 

Along with this project, the last few weeks have been filled with integration meetings after integration meetings with the AOL department that aligns with our ACT team. Even though they can be tedious at times, it’s very important to understand where AOL is coming from and what systems they use in relation to our own. The last few weeks have also been stacked with fun Oath events to make us feel welcome into the new company. I haven’t been hearing any complaints about these awesome events! :) 

Now that the intern project is complete, my time is more open again. I am getting looped in with more cases and campaigns from my mentors. With a better understanding of what my Advertising Creative Technology (ACT) department does, learning the steps for these cases makes a lot more sense and I can retain more of the information I’m learning. 

With 3 months in, that means I technically only have 1 more month left. I want to make sure I get the most out of the last month that I can. I need to continue learning from my mentors and researching areas of our company that I still need to understand. 

Thanks for reading! I plan to write much sooner next time! 

[austinchristensenoath]

During my interview for Yahoo I was asked what animal I relate to most and that of course is the baby cheetah cub! 

1DX_1100 by Brian Scott Via Flickr: Two headed cub !!

[austinchristensenoath]

A few weeks ago I was out in downtown Omaha celebrating pride weekend. When I was getting ready to go home that night, my phone died before I was able to get picked up by my Uber ride. With no way to contact anyone, I had to walk home that night. I live 15 minutes from downtown so it took me about 2 and a half hours to get home. I told my manager what happened to me the following week and she went ahead and gave me a portable phone charger (Yahoo Women In Tech branded and all!!) so that I wouldn’t have to worry about my phone battery dying on me again. 

So thankful to have such an awesome manager here at Oath!! 

[austinchristensenoath]

[austinchristensenoath]

4 Weeks In!

These past few days have been very interesting to be an intern for Yahoo! I guess shouldn’t say I’m an intern for Yahoo anymore. We have officially merged with AOL to create the company I now work for called, Oath: A Verizon Company. With this transition a few people in our Omaha office were laid off in order for us to successfully merge with AOL. It’s been pretty emotional for the full time employees but they all know that this is a part of the corporate world and are looking forward to seeing the future of Oath prosper into the ever changing digital world. 

Lately I have been getting more opportunities to get to know the other interns here at Oath/Yahoo. They are all very cool people. I’m excited for future outings with them and making long lasting friendships and business connections.

This week wrapped up very quickly with the whole transitioning of the company so I focused more on some of the training documents assigned to me and further diving deeper into the realm of digital advertising. It’s a never ending pool of information. But it keeps things fun and interesting. When working with new technology and online services you never know what new discoveries are around the corner. And when these new discoveries are found or innovations are created, we get to work with them! 

On to week 5! :)   

[austinchristensenoath]

So proud of how supportive Yahoo is for the LGBTQA+ community and diversity as a whole! :) <3 

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It’s official people! I now work for Oath! 

[austinchristensenoath]

Week 3!

These weeks working at Yahoo are flying by. I couldn’t be more grateful for all the help my mentors have given me in understanding what the Ad Creative Technology team does for Yahoo and how we partner and get amazing ads put up for our advertisers! 

During week three I was present at multiple meetings with my mentors and even got to see the first steps of a project developing. There’s a lot that goes into kicking off a new project with an advertiser so it’s nice to see the start and fully understand the process :)

From my first week here to now I can already tell that I am comprehending so much more when I listen in on meetings. Even though my training can be tedious at times, going through documents and documents of new terms, programs and processes, I feel very satisfied when I am in a meeting or syncing up with the ACT team and can understand what is going on or even contribute to the conversations. For me, it’s been all about connecting the dots with terms/programs I’ve heard and how they function and fit into what we do at Yahoo. 

Last week we had a little field trip to Cunningham Lake in Omaha for a cleanup project. Growing up on a farm my whole life I’m used to being outside and working with my hands so it was really nice to get out there and do some more physical work! And it was for a good cause! Who doesn’t love that? This is another reason why I like working at Yahoo! The company cares for the environment, especially in the communities where Yahoo companies reside. 

To end this blog for week three, I must mention that this will be the last post in which I will be solely working for Yahoo. By next week we will be combined with AOL to form the new company called Oath: which will be owned by Verizon. Things are definitely changing around the office but I see a lot of hope, excitement and opportunities for the future of Yahoo within Oath:

We shall see! 

Austin