At first glance, efficiency seems like a no-brainer—streamline your processes, save time, and reduce the need for manpower. At Adtrac, our platform promises just that. With Adtrac, larger-scale customers can cut down on two full workdays per campaign by automating everything from planning and customer feedback to content management system (CMS) integrations, campaign execution, reporting, and financial reconciliation. This excludes the countless hours saved in communication and coordination between teams.
Yet, despite these massive efficiency gains, something curious happens: our clients don’t end up downsizing their workforce. In fact, they often find themselves hiring additional staff. How can this be?
Jevon’s Paradox: Why Efficiency Increases Usage
The answer lies in a phenomenon known as Jevon’s Paradox. Named after the 19th-century economist William Stanley Jevons, this paradox describes the counterintuitive observation that an increase in the efficiency of resource use leads to more, not less, of that resource being used. In Adtrac’s case, the resource is work time.
More efficient use of time means that teams can handle more tasks, process more campaigns, and optimize more ads within the same time frame. So instead of reducing workloads, Adtrac’s efficiency boost often results in teams taking on even more work. But this increase in work isn’t a negative—it’s what unlocks the true potential of Adtrac.
Why Workloads Increase After Efficiency Gains
To understand this, let’s break down what Adtrac automates and how it impacts workload:
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Campaign Planning & Refinement: What used to be a laborious task of organizing media placements, optimizing schedules, and adjusting for client feedback can now be done in a fraction of the time.
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Creative Approval & Integration: Through Adtrac, advertisers can upload and approve creative assets directly, reducing the time spent on back-and-forth emails or managing various file formats.
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Transmission to CMS & Execution: Automating the transmission of approved content to CMS ensures that campaigns are displayed on time and accurately, without manual oversight.
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Tracking & Reporting: Adtrac’s platform provides real-time tracking and automated reporting, reducing the hours (or days) spent manually collecting performance data for advertisers.
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Financial Integration: Automating the transfer of campaign data to invoicing systems simplifies billing processes, making them more accurate and efficient.
While all of these automations save teams hours of manual work, the real magic happens in how those saved hours are redeployed.
Shifting from Administrative Tasks to Strategic Growth
What Jevon’s Paradox ignores are the external effects of efficiency gains. Yes, sales teams may still be working the same number of hours, but instead of spending that time on manual tasks, they’re now focusing on high-value activities.
For example:
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More Campaigns: With campaign setup and execution streamlined, teams can run multiple campaigns simultaneously, increasing the company’s overall revenue potential.
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Better Customer Service: Instead of spending hours inputting campaign data, salespeople can now dedicate more time to understanding client needs and building stronger relationships.
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Creative Sales Opportunities: Time that was once spent managing administrative tasks can now be used to explore innovative advertising strategies, such as combining programmatic inventory with traditional media buying, or offering more tailored, multi-channel solutions.
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Scaling Up: Efficiency allows companies to scale up their operations. Rather than handling fewer campaigns with the same resources, businesses can now process more campaigns, delivering better results to more clients without necessarily increasing overheads.
The Farming Analogy: Working Just as Hard, But Producing More
To put this into perspective, let’s take an analogy from farming. Centuries ago, farmers worked from sunrise to sunset, manually plowing fields and harvesting crops by hand. Then came technological advancements: fertilizers, tractors, irrigation systems, and modern agricultural techniques.
One would expect that these advancements would have drastically reduced the workload for farmers. Yet, farmers today still work incredibly hard. What’s changed is what they work on and how much they can produce. A modern farmer, equipped with the latest technology, can produce exponentially more food than their pre-industrial counterparts. So, while the individual effort per unit of production may have decreased, the total output has skyrocketed.
This is the essence of Jevon’s Paradox in the context of modern agriculture: efficiency gains lead to higher overall output, but not necessarily to less work. And just like in farming, the efficiency gains from Adtrac don’t result in less work—they result in more productive, higher-value work.
Adtrac: Scaling Your Business Through Efficiency
The ultimate value of Adtrac isn’t just in automating processes—it’s in what that automation enables. By freeing up time previously spent on manual, repetitive tasks, sales and back-office teams can now focus on growth. They can spend more time servicing advertisers, refining sales strategies, and ensuring optimal use of inventory.
In many cases, this leads to an increase in workload, but it’s the right kind of workload. Teams are working smarter, not harder. And as a result, companies can scale their operations, handle more clients, and generate higher revenues without proportionally increasing costs.
So, why do efficiency gains seem to vanish? Because they don’t. What vanishes is the administrative burden. In its place, companies gain the ability to scale up, deliver more value, and grow in ways that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Conclusion: Embrace the Paradox
Adtrac’s efficiency gains may not reduce your headcount, but they will transform how your team works. By automating the administrative side of digital out-of-home (DOOH) and instore retail media operations, Adtrac enables teams to focus on strategic, revenue-driving activities.
In the end, Jevon’s Paradox isn’t a problem—it’s an opportunity. By embracing efficiency, you’re not just saving time—you’re unlocking your team’s potential to drive more sales, deliver better results, and grow your business. So while it may seem like your workload is increasing, what’s really happening is that your capacity to scale and succeed is expanding exponentially.
