Nearly three-quarters of the global digital industry recognise programmatic as one of the most important capabilities that agencies will need to possess in five years’ time, according to a new survey.
The study, from AppNexus 2015 Global Programmatic Trust Study, quizzed 1,200+ advertisers, publishers and ad tech professionals, exploring attitudes towards programmatic across the global advertising ecosystem.
The study was conducted in coordination with Circle Research, WARC DDMAlliance, IAB Singapore, and IAB Australia with support from multiple IAB bodies across Europe and looks into the motivations, concerns and perceptions of participants in the digital advertising marketplace.
With the programmatic market expected to grow from $29.3bn in 2015 to $61.9bn in 2018 (data from Magna Global), understanding the broader pain points and aspirations of its clients and practitioners is extremely important.
Key findings:
Nearly three-quarters of the ecosystem (71%) now recognises knowledge of programmatic as one of the most important capabilities that agencies will need to possess in five years’ time.
61% of publishers do now offer programmatic inventory.
Almost twice as many buy-side organizations state that improving the ability to target specific audiences would benefit a campaign more than simply having a bigger budget (60% vs. 34%).
Nearly half of the ecosystem (44%) understands very little or nothing about how programmatic works. This is particularly acute among advertisers (63%), agencies (48%), and publishers (47%).
This lack of understanding is remarkable in and of itself; but perhaps even more astonishing is that the lack of knowledge about programmatic runs concurrent with a high usage of it (67%).
A significant segment of the ecosystem (29%) is actually using programmatic despite knowing very little about it.
Challenges to using programmatic: after lack of understanding (47%), the next leading challenges related to programmatic are ‘fear of ads appearing on undesirable sites’ (43%) and ‘lack of transparency as to where advertisements will end up being displayed’ (42%).
Nearly all publishers (92%) believe that increased emphasis on viewability metrics will benefit their businesses.