Companies are spending millions on buying mobile ad inventory programmatically but have little or no knowledge of the practice. Adam Gilsenan, Chief Media Consultant at YOC, considers the current situation and details what needs to be done by sellers and buyers to change this.
I recently bought a nice new lens for my wife’s camera. Let me set the scene. It was getting dangerously close to Christmas, everyone in the shopping centre was loaded with bags and I had nothing. I was panicking. I stumbled into an electrical retailer, saw a lens, asked a few rather pointless questions about it and handed over my debit card. I didn’t ask about full frame cameras, focal length, zoom or any of the things I should have, and the lad in the shop didn’t bother to explain, he just made the sale. I wasn’t confident about it at all. My wife, who knows about cameras, said it was pure luck that it was the right kind of lens. It was a foolhardy way to buy such an expensive item but fortunately I didn’t need to return it to the shop. Phew.
It seems I’m not alone in this way of buying. It would appear that many brands have a similar approach when it comes to mobile ad inventory and buying programmatically. A recent study from the IAB showed that half of those companies investing their budgets in this discipline have little or no knowledge of it.
These are indeed exciting times for mobile, it’s growing exponentially, and programmatic is a highly effective and powerful way of buying mobile media. It’s arguably one of the biggest developments in the advertising space. That said, too many buyers are happy to spend their money without understanding it or indeed feeling entirely comfortable with it. They kind of know that they want it and that’s about it. I’m not suggesting that mobile programmatic is only about keeping up because it most definitely isn’t. That totally misses the point. It’s combining sophisticated targeting with mobile devices. So, why is it so difficult to understand and what can we do to change that?
The problem is that programmatic advertising is a complex process. The advertising world comprises many solutions for the marketer – audience, display, and search – across multiple devices, including mobile. It’s already fragmented and difficult to navigate. Then we bring programmatic into the mix. Advertisers have to work with multiple publishers, ad networks exchanges – the list goes on. They have to consider audience targeting, retargeting and contextual targeting. It gets complicated. Not only that, people used to performing well-proven and familiar tasks for years suddenly have to rethink how their daily work-life looks now. What’s important? What’s necessary? What do they need to focus on?
So what do we do to solve this problem and get marketers buying with confidence?
Explain, train and be transparent
The previous method of decision-making, based on understanding media properties and the targeted audiences they attract, has been replaced by quant-based technologies. This looks at how users respond to campaign objectives to define where to serve ads. The standard buy media, sell media structure has been made outdated by the realities of programmatic.
This is a big change for planners. After all, they weren’t hired to be technologists and, quite frankly, it scares them. They are probably wondering why they’re not working on the interesting custom brand building stuff instead of logging into platforms and looking at data.
Ad Planners need to learn new techniques and gather a new set of tools and platforms, not to mention changes to business processes that these tools require. Industry leaders need to engage in that transition process.
The technology platforms should provide full training on the new systems and offer price incentives when they switch. This will help to phase out the old systems which will, in turn, help to reduce their own maintenance costs associated with outdated tools.
People need to understand what their “new” roles are, how they fit into the ecosystem and receive assurance from management that their jobs are not at risk.
Then consider the value chain. In the time that exists between a real-time bid and a delivered ad impression – and we are talking nanoseconds here – there are several opportunities to deduct fees, agency commissions and taxes. It’s a minefield and causes concern and confusion among advertisers. Marketers should know about the fees deducted from their programmatic ad campaigns. After all, transparency promotes trust and this should be at the heart of our industry.
It will take time but without improved knowledge and understanding, which leads to buying with confidence, we could see progress slowing in programmatic.
By Adam Gilsenan
Chief Media Consultant
YOC
Yoc.com