RTB Zeitgeist: What You Need to Know About Programmatic Direct

Republished from the SiteScout blog.

Programmatic direct is on the rise as more advertisers and publishers seek to bring the efficiency of programmatic to direct orders for ad inventory. Estimates have programmatic direct spending surpassing $8 billion in 2016, accounting for over 40 percent of all ad programmatic display spending. But the process still causes some confusion.

A few specialized vendors facilitate programmatic direct, relying on API integrations with publisher ad servers, allowing advertisers and agencies to have campaigns served directly on a publisher’s ad server in an automated fashion. There are many advertiser benefits, including the automated process, better targeting, ad serving priority and guaranteed inventory volume. Yet drawbacks still hamper widespread adoption, such as detached relationships with publishers, limited adoption, isolated platforms and premium prices. Despite the challenges, programmatic direct is also a process that’s still very much to the publisher’s benefit.

The Biggest Mistakes Brands Make With Programmatic

Programmatic’s popularity continues to rise, but some brands are still having a tough time with adoption, as they face many challenges, and sometimes make some painful mistakes along the way.

One is the tendency for brands to stick to old KPIs. Programmatic shouldn’t be viewed as simply a performance-driven mechanism. Bringing the programmatic practice in-house can help them to avoid that pitfall. Brands also tend to move too fast. Before rushing into it, they need to work out their data strategy and trading technology. Failing to create their own proprietary data is another misstep brands make. It’s the proprietary data that helps brands maintain a competitive advantage.

Separating programmatic into a silo is another big brand error, as is forgetting to provide value to consumers. Programmatic data is something all brand marketers should grasp to better understand consumers, which helps their bottom line in the end.

The Creative Side of Programmatic Advertising

Millward Brown’s top marketer, Amanda Phillips, predicts that programmatic will undergo a dramatic reinvention this year that will see it on the agenda at the start of the creative process. The benefits, she says, will be big, but only if the process is managed with the brand, and not solely performance, in mind. It all has to do with the advantages around contextual priming.

Creative strategies can be adapted across a number of formats to suit different channels and screens. Such an outlook will help brands to better take advantage of the tight audience targeting possible through programmatic. It will also help advertisers to craft a new sort of storytelling that’s both dynamic and contextually relevant. Think of it as a kind of customizable smart advertising.

The Biggest Mistakes Brands Make With Programmatic

The Creative Side of Programmatic Advertising

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