75% of marketers plan to increase programmatic brand spend

Three-quarters of marketers plan to increase programmatic brand spend in the next six to 12 months, according to a survey conducted by Infectious Media; however, financial transparency is the biggest factor in holding back the level of spend.

65% of marketers said that a lack of transparency is the main barrier to increasing programmatic ad spend, followed by the “complexity” of the ecosystem (55%) and “lack of appropriate measurements” (50%).

In contrast, increasing sales is seen as the biggest advantage of programmatic (cited by 75% of marketers), followed by the ability to personalise ad messages and to make use of CRM data (both cited by 65%).

The research also found that marketers regard “synching of on and offline campaigns” as the biggest opportunity (55%) around programmatic in the next six to 12 months, followed by the “connecting up of new data sources” (50%) and programmatic video (45%). Programmatic TV was cited by 40%.

“These results highlight that brand marketers are now well aware of the benefits of programmatic advertising,” said Martin Kelly, Infectious Media’s CEO and co-founder. “It allows advertisers to use data to make smarter buying decisions and with large, premium ad formats now available programmatically it’s a shrewd investment.”

Kelly added that although marketers plan to put more investment into programmatic, transparency remains a clear issue.

“The IAB forecasts programmatic would account for nearly half of display advertising last year, so imagine how high it could be in 2015 if transparency wasn’t an issue,” he said.

“Brands are struggling to build a programmatic advertising strategy that fits into a wider media mix and marketing plan. It’s up to us as an industry to provide the guidance they need to overcome this challenge.”