A business development manager at a European media agency still remembers when the company first launched as a startup with just three team members: two full-time employees and one working student.
In those early months, the agency’s influx of clients was moving faster than its tools and team could keep up.
“It sometimes took us two hours to create an advertiser and put all the ads everywhere,” the manager recalls.
Every ad placement meant opening the CMS, finding the right section, and manually inserting HTML code. Reporting was another layer of work — exporting every campaign to the spreadsheet looked like a stressful chore rather than an efficient measurement.
“We built the banners ourselves and had to track everything with Bitly at first,” he recalls. “If we wanted to change something, we had to dig through the CMS again.”
Over a hundred clients wanted placements, but scaling with this manual setup was impossible.
What began as a few ad campaigns was turning into a bottleneck. The team needed a solution built for the speed of a startup, not against it. It had to handle:
- CPC-based direct deals
- Self-service access for advertisers to view their data
- Clear reporting and analytics without endless spreadsheets
- Lean business development already juggling partnerships, PPC, and affiliate programs.
Evaluating the Options: Epom vs. Google Ad Manager
Before Epom, the media agency tried Google Ad Manager, which lacked CPC pricing and flexible reporting. Then, they looked at enterprise-grade ad servers built for teams with engineers and large budgets.
“Google Ad Manager looked like an option,” the manager explains, “but it didn’t support CPC pricing. And the bigger ad servers we tested expected us to have three engineers just to operate them.”
Epom came out the only platform that matched their speed and performance goals. Here is how:
| Platform | Type | Main Issue for the Client |
|---|---|---|
| Manual CMS Setup | Internal workaround | Required inserting ads by hand; impossible to scale |
| Google Ad Manager | Publisher ad server | Too basic, no CPC pricing, limited reporting |
| Enterprise Ad Servers (e.g., Kevel) | API-based ad server | Needed engineers and big budgets; overcomplex |
| Epom Ad Server | Hosted full-stack ad server |  |
See Epom vs. Google Ad Manager comparison
their small team, the shift to Epom gave them back both control and scalability.
From 2 Hours to 10 Minutes: Advertiser Setup Reimagined
At the agency, campaign setup once meant scrolling through endless CMS fields and matching IDs across spreadsheets. The team couldn’t keep pace with a hundred advertisers waiting in line.
“Before, we had to export everything and do table work. Now I can just do some clicks and then I see it.” — the manager shares.
When they adopted Epom, setup stopped being a test of patience and became a single flow. The platform generated ad tags, tracked clicks, and analyzed metrics instantly.
| Task | Before | With Epom | Time Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertiser setup | 2 hrs | 10 min | 91 % |
| Campaign launch | 2–3 hrs | 20 min | 85 % |
| Reporting | 1 hr | 3 clicks | 95 % |
Doubling the Business Instead of Building the Tech
Almost every tool on the market was either too basic or forced ad ops into development workflows. But the client wanted to focus on agency growth, while someone else gets the tech done.
Unlike enterprise tools that need to be assembled piece by piece, Epom delivered nearly every ad ops feature out of the box. Yet its customization opportunities made it flexible enough to match the media agency’s unique setup.
The team finally managed advertising as a business process, not a technical project.
| Task | Before | With Epom | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad placement | Dependent on developers | Managed by the ad ops team | Autonomy |
| CPC pricing | Not supported | Native and adjustable | Flexible pricing |
| Analytics | Manual exports | Built-in analytics | Instant visibility |
| Advertisers | <50 | 100+ | 2x growth |
Help Now Arrives in One Day, from Real People
“With our previous tool, we had to chase support,” the manager says. “It was slow, and we had to ask again and again for information. With Epom, Ihor replies in a day,” he adds.
For a small team running live campaigns, that kind of delay was a full stop.
The Ad Server That Lasts
At the end of the interview, Epom’s CMO, Lina Lugova, asks with a half-smile, “So what would make you leave Epom, like, soon?”
The manager doesn’t hesitate.
“Nothing, really,” he says. “Everything works as expected… maybe only if you suddenly triple the price.”
After months of testing and scaling, the agency finally reached a state of calm efficiency: every campaign stays brand-safe, every click is tracked, and advertisers get the transparency they expect from a trusted marketplace.
When your tools stop demanding attention, you focus entirely on what drives growth.
