RTB Zeitgeist: Why Small Agencies Grapple With Programmatic

There’s a reason why small to mid-sized agencies are grappling with programmatic; it’s not “the great equalizer” it was thought to be. Because of their size, bigger agencies are still being afforded certain advantages in the programmatic realm.

For one, publishers are starting to cut private deals with preferred partners, effectively negating the early programmatic promise of all agencies being able to buy inventory from the same pool. With private deals, power and budgets are still predominant factors. Also, programmatic talent is hard to come by and that’s especially the case for smaller to mid-sized agencies. Larger agencies can afford to hire many people and train them. Smaller agencies have to hire more strategically.

Bigger agencies can also afford to bring more resources and expertise in-house. As a result, the vendors that small agencies would normally deal with are disappearing.

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5 Principles for Making Programmatic Creative Work

Bringing digital advertising out of its adolescence requires realizing the full potential of programmatic through tech-enabled creativity. It’s about making digital advertising data-driven and dynamic. To reach that maturation, five principles must be mastered.

Lead with great content. Strong content starts with innovative ideas and those ideas get people to believe. Data and tech can empower great ideas. Build ad systems — creative assets that work together across multiple screens and feeds — not campaigns. Use programmatic to make responsive and dynamic creative that’s scaled across screens. Use technology, automation and data to its full potential to create the ads of tomorrow.

Finally, rinse and repeat. Experimentation will be what helps you serve the right ad to the right person at the right time.

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Programmatic TV Following its Own Path

Programmatic TV is starting mature and it looks like it’s finding its own path.

New data indicates that unlike what happened with RTB and digital display ads, programmatic tech in TV is being used more to target premium placements. For example, more than a quarter of the programmatic TV ads bought on TubeMogul’s platform between March 27 and April 5 were placed in primetime, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Another example is when ESPN sold its first ad for “Sportscenter” programmatically. It ran at a time that was rated the highest for men 18-24 years old in 2014.

As MediaPost’s Tyler Loechner said, this is by no means a definitive indication of what to expect from programmatic TV when it finally finds its footing, but it does provide a tantalizing glimpse into what the future might hold.

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