In today’s ThinkLA Programmatic summit, setup in partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, marketers, agencies, technology vendors and publishers got together to discuss the evolution of the programmatic advertising space.
Below are a few key highlights from the event.
In an early panel Tom Kelly from AOL said that “in programmatic the best way to learn is to do. This is poignant because I find that many marketers talk about understanding programmatic. The challenge is that many times agencies who run programmatic campaigns outsource them to vendors. This is good for short term success, but for long term success it’s important for the agency or the advertiser to have actual hands on keyboard. Otherwise, outside parties end up with key points of knowledge that should be held within the enterprise. Importantly, having hands on keyboard lets the advertiser really understand how to leverage the programmatic ecosystem as it evolves. The longer it stays out of the ecosystem the larger the learning curve when it decides to adopt programmatic hands on.
In the same panel Tom Kelly mentioned that ad executives need to know more precisely how to use programmatic solutions, stating that “it will be hard to find a place in advertising if you don’t understand tech.” If you are an enterprise thinking about diving into the demand side platforms, or adopting data management platforms, you’ll develop enterprise knowledge of these platforms. Very importantly you’ll also be creating education opportunities for your hungry and very eager executives who are yearning for opportunities to grow. I’ve heard in multiple occasions that young talent leaves agencies because they aren’t being nurtured with career-advancing learning opportunities. Programmatic is key to future advertising success for both enterprises and ad executives.
In the very first panel I heard a great quote: “programmatic is the new normal.” We are past the point of wondering whether it will be a thing, or whether programmatic advertising is important to the overall advertising ecosystem. We’re at the point where 73% of 2016 display advertising will be transacted through programmatic channels. We’re getting to that point where it’s time to adopt a programmatic approach for your enterprise, or risk having your competitors do it, and losing competitive opportunities.
During a breakout session with Kargo research reveals that of four mobile ad types – banners, interstitials, in-stream and sidekicks – one is substantially under-seen. In the research by Kargo banners are only seen 38% of the time, whereas the other three ad sizes are seen 63 – 71% of the time. Interstitials are seen the most at 71% and get viewed by 2.5 seconds.
In the final session of the day Mac Delaney spoke about the evolution of Merkle and their people based marketing. He touted the evolution of their data business to mimic Facebook’s audience buying platform. The essence is the ability to run people based marketing campaigns based on email address, physical address and phone numbers taken from CRM and email databases. This targeting is available already in the walled gardens of Facebook and Google, and through Merkle new publishers are onboarding these types of targeting capabilities.
