I had the opportunity to attend the Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco and one topic that caught my attention was how programmatic has evolved in the eyes of marketers. A couple of years ago, marketers were still skeptical of investing on programmatic due to the lack of understanding as to what programmatic is and benefits. Since then, a lot has changed. According to data from 4 different surveys conducted between 2015 and 2016 with key decision makers from top 200 brands
- 64% of marketers know what programmatic is and how to use (2014 was 23%)
- Marketers understand the key benefits of programmatic – efficiency (cost and process), optimizations (ongoing) and be able to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience
- Current programmatic spend is continuing to increase and is as high as 53K per minute
- Advertisers are seeing 50% improvement of efficiency and effectiveness when buying media programmatically
Focus on education is a big contributor to the increase of knowledge and investment on programmatic. Also, they understand that there is minimum value of running programmatic if you can’t understand the data and continue to improve campaign’s performance by applying insights. To that point, the survey also identified that
- 78% invest on internal training – building out knowledge and expertise
- 68% shifted internal organizations close to data pros – more collaboration between marketers and analytics
- 74% rely on the expertise their agencies to buy programmatically
There are still a few key areas of concerns that are inhibiting some marketers to fully invest on programmatic such as bots, fraud, lack of transparency (inventory, process and what they are paying for) and trust (partnership with trusted partners).
- 62% demand transparency from agencies and partners – more involved to address concerns on inventory quality, viewability, etc.
- 69% main concern is buying invalid traffic, but only 24% has taken control by using verification tools
In order to help marketers to leverage programmatic to the fullest, they also have provided insights on their expectations from partners that are helping to manage this program.
- Deliver meaningful insights that can be applied to their brands
- Definitions are murky at best – demand more clarity – talk about the benefits not the technology
- Guidance is needed throughout the process 1:1
- Communicate how the technology is helping to achieve their goals
