Matt Spiegel, SVP, GM of Americas for MediaMath, will present the findings of a new study conducted with Digiday to better understand how retail marketers are incorporating programmatic practices into their strategies. The findings reveal the scope of retail marketers that have adopted the programmatic approach, as well as insight into the specific marketing goals for which they are leveraging the approach and seeing the greatest impact. Furthermore, the results also provide an understanding of how data-driven retail marketers plan to refine and update their programmatic efforts in the upcoming year
Let’s Start with Some Questions…How many people know what programmatic media buying is?How many people are currently deploying programmatic strategies as part of their digital marketing mix?How many rely on their agencies to do this?How many do it in-house?
Simply said, programmatic is “The use of technology to automate processes and the use of math to improve results.”This ability has been around for more than 5 years, but until now has just been gaining wider adoption…
Recent studies by Winterberry and Digiday are a testament to this adoption. Throughout this presentation I will be referencing results from both these studies.85% of advertisers responding to a survey conducted by Winterberry Group in cooperation with the IAB, MediaMath and others, are currently deploying real-time bidding strategies today -- and 64% are doing so aggressively.And as we look to the future, those advertisers who are not yet employing programmatic practices, 92% say they expect to within the next two years.
Whether it’s the brand direct or their agency pulling the levers, the real opportunity today lies in a dual approach - the brand and the agency are both equally informed, leveraging insights and optimizing the campaigns side by side.   One of the biggest benefits of programmatic marketing is the immediacy of the insights you can glean about your customers and potential customers.  While it’s critical to have someone ready at a moment’s notice to leverage these insights to optimize your media campaign, having direct access to these insights on the brand side will help you better hone your offline or other non-media based marketing strategies.Brands need total transparency into their media campaigns for a range of reasons – from understanding campaign budgeting to being able to activate data insights across the entire organization. For some this may mean bringing the technology platform in house and managing it entirely on their own, but for the majority, at least in the near future, it means having direct access to the technology, but continuing to rely on the agency or other intermediary who has the true programmatic media buying expertise to pull the levers.Â
According to the Winterberry study, 55% of advertisers say they are using programmatic to “effectively engage” target audiencesWhile direct response strategies have always lead in programmatic because of the clear ROI associated with it, it seems that this is now beginning to have a halo effect on branding and awareness campaigns. A combined 61% of retail advertisers say they are using programmatic for direct response marketing (remarketing and prospecting, respectively).Similarly, agencies acting on behalf of retailers are using programmatic at a combined 77% for direct response.On the flip side, 41% of retail advertisers are using it for branding/awareness strategies,and 30% of agencies.Advertisers and their agencies have proven out the model with DR and we should expect to see a growth in non-DR campaigns as a result.
As exemplified in the use case just shared, activating data - taking both your own 1P data and combining that with market insights (3P data) – is at the core of programmatic.And based on both Winterberry and Digiday, advertisers and agencies seem to agree… 78% of advertisers say 1st party data types are fundamental to supporting programmatic approaches today; while 80% of retail advertisers say they leverage first party data; and 94% of agencies leverage 1Pdata on behalf of their retail advertiser clientsLooking at 3rd party data, advertisers and agencies alike also seem to be tapping into and leveraging market insights from the greater digital ecosystem…66% of advertisers say 3rd party data types are fundamental to supporting programmatic approaches today; while 64% of retail advertisers say they leverage third party data; and 72% of agencies leverage 3Pdata on behalf of their retail advertiser clients
When asking marketers which KPI’s they felt were important when evaluating the effectiveness of a programmatic ad campaign, ROI was most important, but transparency was significantly ranked high by both agencies and advertisers alike. FromDigiday’s findings, cost transparency – what are each paying for what they’re getting, and can campaign buys be segmented by cost per customer acquisition, weighs on the minds of both ad buyers and advertisers. Transparency around site lists was also a top choice for “very important” variables. In short, where an ad runs will likely always matter.Retailers are still deriving greater utility from evaluating where a campaign runs vs how much it costs, probably with an eye towards reprising and improving campaign results…Having transparency is at the core of MediaMath’s practices – having full visibility into all components (data, media, and economics).This in turn allows you the marketerto have better control of their media spend and outcomes.Â
Provided with the right tools to this – to have transparency, to have control, to leverage data – the big question is, are more marketers planning to put more dollars toward programmatic media buying…The answer is yes. Continuing the upward trend, advertisers and agencies are showing their faith and belief in the effectiveness of programmatic, allocating more of their ad budgets for programmatic means.83% of agencies and 82% of direct retail advertisers expect their budgets to increase in 2014And how will retail advertisers invest these growing budgets?69% plan to better integrate their online and offline marketing data56% will invest in more third-party data
Programmatic advertising isn’t just a set of tools that support process automation, or even a real-time auction through which online media is bought and sold. Rather, it represents the culmination of decades of innovation in technology, data and addressable media – a holistic approach through which media buyers and sellers may align organizational processes with automation technology in support of ongoing, channel agnostic customer engagement (and to allow for the continuous optimization of that effort as business strategies evolve.) - Source: Winterberry Group’s “Programmatic Everywhere? Data Technology and the Future of Audience Engagement,” (November 2013)Programmatic allows marketers to leverage both their own data and market insights, to aggregate that intelligence and connect that intelligence to the advanced logic for making decisions. And by providing the connected ecosystem, you make even a little bit of knowledge immediately useful.