Programmatic will get personal with the adoption of identity solutions, integration into CRM systems and specialised approaches to vertical targeting, according to a new report from real time bidding platform Turn.
Programmatic made enormous headway in 2014 and now 89% of European publishers, advertisers and agencies state that they believe that programmatic trading will have a significant impact on digital advertising, according to recent research by the IAB.
However 2015 will not be a year for programmatic providers to rest on their laurels. Marketers have the opportunity in the coming year to develop creative, strategic and highly personalised campaigns, spurred on by new innovations and the interpretation of valuable data insights through programmatic.
Turn outlines its three global trend predictions for the ad-tech industry in 2015:
1. Identity is imperative – We will see broad adoption of identity solutions by advertisers and their digital providers. Major industry players like Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo and Google that own PII and niche players that specialise in “cross-device” will debate the scale, accuracy and privacy compliance of their IDs. This will cause some minor adoption delays, but ultimately budgets will shift to players with sound identity solutions. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a marketer willing to put their data into many different systems, so there will only be a few winners. By the end of 2015, identity won’t be a standalone product or niche business, but rather an integrated and core component of larger solutions so that marketers can map IDs from any digital touch-point.
2. CRM meets PRM: Prospect Relationship Management – More brands will use their customer relationship management (CRM) data assets to inform their anonymous marketing. Some brands have been utilising CRM onboarding (the process of bringing anonymous and aggregated CRM data and appending it to a cookie or mobile ID), but friction in the market, lack of training and standardisation of ID matching and fear of privacy compliance has slowed down a marketer’s ability to actually take action with the data. Partnerships that bridge CRM and marketing will allow brands to think about coordinating their messaging and getting smarter with their ad spend. In addition, the increase in available data (both third-party and onboarded first-party data) will take customer profiling away from small-scale experiments into real-time implementations. Marketers are thinking about customer lifetime value and how to find more audiences that look like their ideal customers. The pieces are in place for marketers to use important consumer information in a secure and anonymous way to make their paid media more effective.
3. Programmatic goes vertical – Over the last three years the ad tech industry has built the infrastructure needed for programmatic buying to develop, starting with open auction real-time bidding (RTB). Now, with the necessary systems in place, there is the opportunity to develop more sophisticated approaches to programmatic. In the next 12 months, we will see more custom solutions for specific verticals, for example, CPG, B2B and Financial Services. Applying data to content strategies that go beyond traditional “advertising” can help change customer behaviour and eventually encourage buying behaviour. This will go well beyond the packaging up of some inventory, to offer solutions truly tailored to the workflow and needs of specific industry verticals.
Commenting on what the programmatic industry can expect in the New Year, Pierre Naggar, MD EMEA at Turn, said: “Ad industry thinking changed dramatically in 2014. Video advertising is no longer considered a separate ‘channel’ and brands are beginning to think about the creative for TV and online video in the same way, now focusing more on the audience they are targeting. We can expect more innovation in programmatic over the next 12 months; marketers will have a better indication of their target audience’s behaviours, both ahead of time through CRM systems, and across numerous touchpoints using cross-device identity solutions. Programmatic’s integration into the wider marketing mix will open up completely new opportunities for marketers to serve more targeted and personalised experiences, including those based on vertical specialisms.”