Kristoffer Ewald, Chief Innovation Officer at NetBooster Group, looks at the future of programmatic marketing.
Programmatic advertising has transformed the marketing industry. Despite recent controversies surrounding ad placement technology , one cannot ignore the fact that programmatic is doing a lot to completely change how brands and marketers match interests with consumers.
Programmatic uses automated technology to purchase the media spaces most likely to reach a brand’s target audience. In doing so, it offsets many of the administrative burdens associated with traditional marketing strategies and offers brands a better, more streamlined approach to customer dialogue.
Given these benefits, it’s not surprising that agencies are investing more and more in automated marketing, with eMarketer predicting that programmatic will account for 70% of the UK’s display ad spending in 2017 – up 44% from 2015.
In recent years, brands have become less concerned with catch-all advertising and more interested in marketing tactics that support one-to-one customer dialogue. Programmatic is fast becoming adept at facilitating this pursuit, crunching complex consumer data to confirm that the brand’s marketing efforts are reaching the precise audience(s) it’s targeting, rather than simply leaving it to chance.
In this regard, programmatic advertising is enabling brands to achieve far better results, but there is still room for improvement. While this technology is on the right track, several obstacles are preventing programmatic software from perfecting consumer engagement. For a start, legislation has been introduced to require brands to ask for customers’ permission before retaining their personal information.
Having access to this data is vital, as the more that brands know about the audience they are targeting, the better the odds of reaching them in the optimal way. It will therefore be essential for brands to secure this consent, but that will mean convincing customers that they have something to gain from sharing their personal data.
Programmatic can actually deliver on this promise; if a brand knows what its customer is looking for, programmatic software can show them the most attractive deals and free them from irrelevant and unwanted spam.
This is where the true disruption in this sector lies. The future of marketing is in the facilitation of brand-consumer dialogue, not only when it’s an expressed need by the consumer (pull), but also increasingly when it’s a predicted interest or need (push). The brands that conquer the complexity of data, technology, fragmentation and noise will be the future winners of this race, as they will be paving the way towards a future of much more personal consumer dialogues powered by programmatic approaches.
Going forward, the development of sophisticated technologies including machine learning, cloud computing power and general technology advances will allow programmatic to make the best use of consumer data – data which has been openly and readily provided by the consumer themselves. Once this is achieved, programmatic advertising will succeed in meeting its full potential.
By Kristoffer Ewald
Chief Innovation Officer