Understanding the language of programmatic
Following an ISBA report this week claiming advertisers remain uncertain about programmatic trading, Videology’s Anne de Kerckhove looks at how the subject can be simplified. Get your notepads ready.
A few weeks back, I found myself at the doctor’s office with a recurring pain in my shoulder. During my examination the doctor began reeling off a list of potential ailments, all of which sounded slightly terrifying and complex to the untrained ear. Don’t you just love “GP speak?”
Feeling a little confused, I asked him to clarify what he meant. Looking up from his notepad he said, “Yeah, you’ve hurt your shoulder.” His response got me thinking, why didn’t he say that in the first place?
The likely answer is that he’s used to talking in medical terms and, being a very good doctor, wanted to be as accurate as possible in his prognosis. However, as someone with no medical background, all I wanted was a simple answer and even better, a simple solution that addressed my concern: my shoulder hurt and I wanted it to stop!
So why the anecdote? Well, it struck a chord with me around the need for a clearer language within our own industry. We too can be guilty of overcomplicating the simple at times, creating confusion around what we do and the solutions we offer, especially when it comes to programmatic trading.
If the digital community worked together on the development of a simple, universal language that speaks to the issues that brands think about each and every day, all parties would benefit. Remember – the less time clients need to spend trying to decipher the concept of programmatic, the more time they could spend contemplating the benefits that it could bring to their brands!
What do we even mean by programmatic?
So let’s start with the basics. While there is a range of jargon and acronyms that we need to weed out to get to simplicity of language within our industry, perhaps there’s no more misinterpreted term than “programmatic” itself. Undoubtedly, the most common misconception is that programmatic is simply another term for real-time bidding (RTB). Wrong.
RTB is just one commercial model that can be applied to programmatic trading. In reality, the scope of the programmatic ecosystem is actually far broader than that. It’s not simply a case of blindly bidding and hoping to get a message in front of the right audience at the right time.
Rather, it’s about buying intelligently, using data to make smarter, more informed decisions that enable better targeting and results in an automated way.
In addition to the RTB model, programmatic planning and buying can also be used to for reserved trading, which means a guaranteed number of impressions for a fixed cost over a given period of time, similar to the way television is bought and sold.
For brand advertisers interested in using digital video to complement their television buys, making this distinction is crucial to helping them understand how programmatically traded video can fit seamlessly into their overall marketing plan.
As Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer recently said: “The opposite of programmatic is not premium. It’s manual.” With programmatic trading set to be worth £530 million across the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Italy by 2017, it’s more important than ever that we make brand advertisers understand this broader definition.
And once you’ve got their attention…
Tell them what they really want to hear. That is, how can programmatic trading help advertisers and brands deliver better ROI, both in terms of cost and time.
– That’s right. If you really want to bring a three letter acronym into the conversation, make it ROI, not DSPs, CTR or RTB. Moreover, whenever possible, focus on the longer-term brand objectives that programmatic can be instrumental in driving for several key reasons:
– Access to data. Whether 1st brand party data, 3rd party vendor data or publisher-driven insights, all can be utilised individually or in unison to cull consumer insights, provide targeting, and inform future campaign strategy.
– Cross-platform Planning. By utilising platforms with integrated, cross-platform measurement capabilities, advertisers can holistic measurement reach and frequency across an entire campaign – not in silos – allowing them to eliminate wasted duplicate impressions and increase incremental reach.
– Control. Programmatic is all about getting better control of your assets. Using a quality platform allows organisations to confidently plan digital media and maintain brand safety through a variety of build-in safety feature ensuring viewability, fraud protection and quality content.
Importantly, brand advertisers can use programmatic trading as part of their holistic media planning strategy. With each campaign, it’s possible to understand how consumers are reacting to the message, analyse that data, and apply it to make better decisions as the campaign progresses, or in future campaigns.
Remember tech is great, but it’s still about the humans…
Ad tech enthusiasts can talk all day about automation and ‘big data.’ But it’s important to never lose sight of the end game. Helping brands better understand and speak to their consumers is at the centre of everything we do in the advertising industry.
Technology such as programmatic trading – driven by sophisticated algorithms – is actually making us better able to understand ‘consumers’ as people, using data to stay relevant to audiences across the entire consumer lifecycle. Make sure that important point doesn’t get lost in the translation.
In short, ad technology can help brands build a compelling picture of the individual from combined datasets, and help reach those consumers, opening up the opportunity to provide added value to the consumer through a better, more relevant experience.
Now you’re talking