A day in the life of a Data Analyst Manager - Meet Eeruj!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Venatus

I'm Eeruj, and I'm a Data Analyst Manager at Venatus.

I joined the company during the first lockdown last year. Starting at a company without meeting anyone face to face was a new experience for me. In advertising, first impressions are everything, so imagine the struggle of introducing myself to new people without a decent trim and a camera positioned so low on my laptop that my double chin was always in view. 

That being said, my first couple of weeks at Venatus were amazing. I really enjoyed speaking with the different teams within the business. Learning how each department works independently and alongside each other was great to see.

Our technology is incredibly unique, so it took a while to become familiar with it - even to this day, our tech is constantly evolving, so I'm always learning. When I first joined, my manager said, "Every day is a school day for me" - which, honestly, summarises my work life as well - if you hear me use that phrase in future, let's pretend I said it first.

If I were to summarise my role, I'd say I manage the data at Venatus. I sit across all departments of the business, identifying opportunities to grow yield and revenue for the company and its publishers.

What does a typical day look like for you? 

In the morning, I will look through the numbers for our video and display inventory, seeing if we've had any spikes or drops from the day before. If it's a significant change, I'll dig deeper into that trend, pulling out all sorts of graphs and historical data to explain my findings. The Zach Galifianakis meme where numbers and maths symbols are revolving around his head is an accurate depiction of me most mornings. 

Following this, I'll join a few meetings with the different teams to hear what's going on around the business. Once the meetings are done then I'm in my zone. One of my favourite aspects of my role is the freedom I have to be creative. You may ask, how can an analyst be creative? Well, I certainly don't mean I'm recreating the Mona Lisa in a data visualization tool. Rather, I'm able to follow wherever the data takes me, such as looking at our costs, campaign performance or if any of our SSPs are over/under indexing. I have meetings with the big bosses at Venatus every month where I discuss cool opportunities - so much of my week is spent building use cases based on my findings.

Currently, I'm observing the month of Ramadan, which entails fasting sunrise to sunset for 30 days. During this time, I take a few more breaks from my work to help conserve my energy. I'm a huge foodie, so spend most of my evenings looking for fancy recipes to cook for my evening meal.  

What makes your day? 

Honestly, it's the people that I work with. I love discovering the big, juicy, revenue-making opportunity as much as the next analyst but being at home for a year has made me appreciate the power of social interaction so much more. That's why I do like annoying my colleagues on chat. I also believe I've mastered the art of communicating through GIFs, a real lockdown achievement. *Insert DJ Khaled GIF*

What is the best piece of professional advice you have ever been given?

In my early weeks at Venatus, I was presenting to the team, and I kept using phrases like "the issue here…" and "the problem we face is...". Someone suggested I replace negative words like "issue" and "problem" and swap them for positive words such as "opportunity". When you have your analyst hat on, you tend to focus on fixing things rather than seeing how you can improve things. It's a simple swap, but I find it helps get me in a better mindset.

What do you enjoy most about working at Venatus? 
I'll say people again here but in a different context. I won’t name names to preserve the collective egos, but there are some exceptional minds at Venatus. To be able to see and understand things from my colleagues’ perspectives has been so beneficial for me, especially when it comes to facing problems and challenges identifying opportunities in my job.