Within the purchase of advertising in digital media, the programmatic purchase has been playing a relevant role for several years due to the possibility of acquiring advertising space globally and in real time. However, lately, transparency in the world of programmatic purchasing is taking a lot of relevance among agencies, technologies and partners. This conversation is topical, maximum when cases have appeared in which it is not very clear how this activity is developing.
It is a fact that, in spite of the fraud cases that have arisen and have implicated important media agencies, the market continues betting on the programmatic purchase. In fact, in an article [1] published on the eMarketer portal, practically 4 out of every 5 dollars invested in 2017 in the US in display campaigns will be invested in this type of transaction, reaching $ 32.56 billion. Moreover, according to this study, the trend is to increase to $ 46 Billion in 2019.
According to eMarketer, more than 60% of professionals in US advertising agencies are concerned with the quality and transparency of their inventory sources. However, and despite the growing concern that advertisers feel about this problem, they continue to allocate more than half of their budgets to programmatic advertising.
Among the points that most concern advertisers are the intricate contracts that brands and agencies must sign, as well as the lack of knowledge about the programmatic ecosystem (DSP’s, Ad Servers, SSP’s, etc.) and the lack of standards and protocols. All this generates confusion among advertisers when analyzing investments and evaluating their profitability.
On the other hand, from the Association of Advertisers of the United States (ANA, its abbreviations in English) they indicate to the advertisers in their study [2] Programmatic: Seeing Through the Financial Fog that, to manage and to optimize this discipline, they need to understand the complexity of the flow of data within the programmatic purchase. “Advertisers must take the appropriate steps to understand the role and use of data throughout the programmatic purchasing chain, especially as programmatic purchasing becomes an established targeting and marketing mechanism across the entire consumer landscape media”.
All in all, the ANA recognizes that the programmatic purchase offers accuracy in terms of audience segmentation, scalability, profitability, real-time optimization and unprecedented Big Data leverage for advertisers.
So, we can conclude that transparency is, nowadays, vital and the main challenge that advertisers face. However, taking into account the potential of this discipline, it is important to have a partner who knows this market and allows optimizing the investment that, year after year, companies should allocate to the programmatic purchase of advertising.
Sources:
[1] “Programmatic Advertising Estimates.” eMarketer; April 2017 https://www.emarketer.com/Article/eMarketer-Releases-New-Programmatic-Advertising-Estimates/1015682
[2] “Programmatic: Seeing Through the Financial Fog.” ANA, May 2017 http://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/44602
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Also published on Medium.