MMA

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INTRODUCTION
Signaling that the rise of programmatic buying in mobile is equally as dramatic as its
ascension in other forms of digital media, the Mobile Marketing Association’s first-ever
Automation and Programmatic Forum studied not only its growth, but the
ramifications that growth has for mobile. The Forum brought together several hundred
practitioners from brands, publishers, agencies and technology providers.
Speakers discussed everything
from the need for clients to manage
their own data to better understand
programmatic, to how to use it to
accelerate growth, to how to make
the programmatic marketplace
transparent and well-lit.
But if programmatic is seen as the
apex of marketing automation,
speakers often focused on it as a
means to an end much higher than
automation in and of itself. As opening keynote Rob Griffin, chief innovation officer at
Almighty said, the goal is “to automate the easier tasks so you can focus on the bigger
tasks.”
Below are five themes that emerged during the course of the day, with further
discussion below:
1. Creative execution is crucial to being successful in buying programmatic; it’s
not just about effectively using data and technology.
2. Programmatic needs to be used to create a seamless user experience between
platforms.
3. Mobile programmatic is no longer a stepchild to managed buying, or
programmatic in other media, but it lags in some areas.
4. Mobile programmatic suffers from some of the same problems regarding
measurement, fraud and a lack of transparency as other digital media has had.
5. Mobile video is booming, and more and more buys are programmatic and
cross-platform.
In short, the mobile programmatic marketplace is looking a lot like the marketplace as
a whole, whether it’s being compared to programmatic on other platforms, or in what
it can and should deliver in terms of the user experience.

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Creative execution is crucial to being
successful in buying programmatic;
it’s not just about effectively using data and
technology.
Throughout the Forum, speakers kept coming back to how essential it is for
practitioners to customize creative alongside the data they are using to complete the
buy. As Griffin pointed out, without using targeted contextual creative: ”Now I’m just
annoying all the right people with crappy ads.” To create the right degree of
customization, marketers can use all sorts of levers, he said, including daypart, mobile
vs. desktop, lifestage and so forth. Mihael Mikek, founder/CEO of Celtra, who spoke
later in the day, affirmed that, “Users are looking for personalized and contextualized
experiences.”
During his presentation, Rajeev Subramanyam, vp/partnership and digital acquisition
for American Express OPEN, emphasized how creative, when customized with data,
has definitive effects on the bottom line. For Amex, programmatic is defined as “using
data and automation to deliver the right experience to the right prospect at the right
price” and other speakers echoed that sentiment throughout the day. Subramanyam
noted that at Amex, when creative, data and technology work in consort, the company
has seen a 90 percent rate of card approvals.
Mikek pointed out that creative in programmatic so far doesn’t match up to its
sophisticated data. The goal is to “use all the signals and data points to make it
completely dynamic.”
If that sounds burdensome,
producing creative that lives
up to the data powering it
doesn’t have to be difficult.
OperaMediaWorks senior
creative director Jason
Collar – who presented with
Mikek -- demonstrated just
how simple it can be to
bring context to creative. In
the example, a campaign
from Mountain Dew simply
changed players to reflect
the geo-location of the user, and made the campaign more relevant.
Mobile Marketing Asc @MMAglobal Apr 14
Quality is key: "Every app that's on your first screen should be
personalized to you & contextualized relevant." @mihamikek1
@CeltraMobile
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Programmatic needs to be used to
create a seamless user experience between
platforms.
Almighty’s Griffin opened the Forum with an analog
example of how frustrating it is when experiences aren’t
seamless and integrated for the customer: phone-based
customer service. He cited a scenario nearly everyone has
experienced – being passed from service rep to service
rep, continually having to repeat the same information:
account numbers, phone numbers, the problem that
needs troubleshooting and so forth.
In digital, customers experience awkward hand-offs all of
the time: devices owned by the same user and being used to do research on the same
product don’t leverage the connection. Data such as device IDs are needed to power
those connections, but most companies aren’t leveraging them, he said, even though
71 percent of consumers “react negatively to inconsistencies in brand experience
across devices” and one out of ten say such inconsistencies actually drive them away
from a brand.
Amex’s Subramanyam expressed a similar sentiment, “Mobile is really a whole new set
of opportunities…but yet we are in the infancy of how to communicate with our
customers in a seamless way.”
The company’s goal is to move from the 2015 model of a fragmented mobile
ecosystem, banners and the so-called “Black box” of programmatic, in which aspects
of the transaction are unclear. By 2017, Amex hopes to make the experience for the
user seamless and immersive, as illustrated by the visual below.
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5. 4
Mobile programmatic is no longer a
stepchild to managed buying, or
programmatic in other media, but it lags in
some areas.
Catherine Boyle, principal analyst at
eMarketer, sketched out the statistical
details about mobile programmatic’s
growth in her presentation, “In-App
Inventory: Programmatic’s Diamond in
the Rough.” The company predicts that
$15.45 billion in advertising will be
served programmatically in 2016, about
half on Facebook. That figure is larger
than radio, newspapers or magazine
spending, and is 69% of mobile display.
But there are still factors holding mobile programmatic back even though eMarketer
predicts a 37% increase in it next year. One is a gap between app use and the
programmatic dollars spent on in-app advertising. Users spend 79.3% of their mobile
time within the app universe, but only 73.2% of mobile ad dollars go there. As
advertisers look for cross-platform buying opportunities, the mobile web is still getting
an outsized number of dollars since it plays a more dominant role in programmatic
environments. Advertisers also still favor web-centric environments and say
retargeting is easier and premium content is usually more available.
A separate prediction, offered by Joe Prusz, global head of mobile at Forum sponsor
Rubicon Project: mobile programmatic would grow to 73 percent of all mobile display
in 2018 from slightly more than half of the marketplace now. (Source: IDC, Digital
Advertising Market Model)
Despite some roadblocks, the growth predictions underscore that some issues with in-
app programmatic inventory are quickly being solved. Major publishers, including The
Weather Company and Pandora, are embracing it, CPMs are rising, and advertiser
interest in in-app inventory is growing.
AOL’s Lamborghini reflected the viewpoint of many speakers at the Forum, when she
noted that creative options and targeting capabilities have caught up to managed
buys, but outcomes are dependent on the quality of data -- such as first party data
and location – the marketer has access to. Data is what gives the extra layer of context
that makes programmatic work.
Mobile Marketing Asc @MMAglobal Apr 14
"Mobile Programmatic will be a 56 Billion dollar opportunity."
@JoePrusz @rubiconproject on stage at #Programmatic Forum in
NYC #MMAF2016
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Mobile programmatic suffers from some of
the same problems regarding measurement,
fraud and a lack of transparency as other
digital media has had.
Another common thread through many of the Forum’s sessions was discussion of the
issues that make programmatic – and digital – less than perfect platforms:
measurement, fraud and lack of transparency.
Ron Pinelli, vp/digital research and standards
for the Media Rating Council, gave attendees
an overview of the progress being made
towards more accurate measurement. Its
mobile viewership impression guidelines are
currently open for public comment and it is
also working on a currency that will track
viewable impressions to a human along with
duration and targeted audience
characteristics. Currently, he said
programmatic lags other trading platforms in
adoption of viewable impressions counting and it is also said that RTB and Exchange
environments within programmatic were most concerning when it comes to invalid
traffic detection and filtration.
The MRC’s progress in targeted audience characteristics is largely focused on
attribution, including audience-based currently and location data and the validity of
attribution methodology for things such as registration.
Other speakers pinned many of mobile programmatic’s issues to the complexity of the
marketplace. “When we talk to our clients what they really want is much more
simplicity,” said Scott Meyer, CEO of Ghostery. “You can now spend $100 million on
the Web in ten minutes. Try spending $100 million in the app system without going
through Facebook or Google. You can’t right now.”
“Complexity and security have an inverse relationship,” explained White Ops’ Tiffany,
who said that mobile ad fraud is booming.
Meyer called for major industry players to set encryption standards saying it was their
role, not that of the government or trade associations.
Mobile Marketing Asc @MMAglobal Apr 14
"You'll never remove the incentives. What you can work with are
standards and objective metrics." @scottmeyer @Ghostery
#MMAF2016
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7. 6
Mobile video is booming, and more
and more buys are programmatic and
cross-platform.
As it has time and again, on other platforms, video is proving itself in mobile. Part of it,
of course, is the union of video’s unsurpassed engagement with the intimacy of
mobile’s full-screen experience, but it is also being extensively leveraged in
programmatic, as buyers become more sophisticated with targeting and more
inventory slowly becomes available. Additionally, video is increasingly being bought
cross-platform, as advertisers seek to use video’s engagement wherever users are. As
Spencer Scott, chief revenue officer of Fiksu said on a panel devoted to video: “I think
we are seeing people move to screen-agnostic campaigns.”
[Clients are] looking for the consumer,” said Edric Chan, directory of inventory
partnerships at the Trade Desk during the same session. “It doesn’t matter which
screen….we’ll find you on whatever device you’re on.”
Per eMarketer, programmatic will
account for more than half of all digital
video buying in 2016, or $5.37 billion of
the expected $9.59 billion total, and the
vast majority of buyers throughout the
world expect to increase their video
budgets this year.
It’s also becoming more common for
advertisers to employ mobile-first
strategies. Havas Media’s Kelly Leach, who presented a case study about
Oppenheimer, noted that the advertiser focused on mobile because its target –
financial advisors – tend to be on-the-go. The marketer used programmatic to buy a
campaign featuring outstream video – which runs within the stream of content – that
included dynamic creative optimization tactics, automatic resizing and the phone’s
accelerometer so that the creative would change as the phone moved. Leach’s
experience countered programmatic’s reputation of being “boring.”
No matter what prism attendees looked through at the MMA’s first Automatic and
Programmatic Forum – targeting, creative, pricing and even measurement hurdles –
one thing was clear: Mobile programmatic not only isn’t boring, it’s becoming a can’t-
do-without-tool for mobile marketers.
Mobile Marketing Asc @MMAglobal Apr 14
"Mobile and video are important to your results. Should be over
1/3 of your allocation." Dave Coffey of Contexxt #MMAF2016
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8. MMA PROGRAMMATIC COMMITTEE
Interested in participating or learning more about the
MMA Programmatic Committee?
PROGRAMMATIC NAVIGATOR
Contact committees@mmaglobal.com
and check out the Mobile Programmatic Committee website
here www.mmaglobal.com/programs/programmatic
The MMA would like to thank our Forum Partners
Mobile MarketerTHE NEWS LEADER IN MOBILE MARKETING, MEDIA AND COMMERCE
Presented By
Supporting Partners
Premium Report Partner
Media Partners
The Programmatic Navigator is designed to guide brand
marketers to a place where the power of mobile can be
harnessed today for all types of campaigns and objectives.
www.mmaglobal.com/programs/programmatic/navigator