Five Qs to MediaMath’s Greg Williams on programmatic in Asia
For some, there is a conflict of interest between technology and creativity. For others, the two go hand in hand. Technology empowers creativity and also frees up time to strategise. It is the second school of thought that Greg Williams, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President Open Partnerships at MediaMath belongs to. One would say that that is obvious given that MediaMath is a player in the programmatic space that uses data to understand consumer behaviour and identify marketing opportunities. But according to Mr Williams, MediaMath’s approach is convincing by example and that is what the company has set out to achieve. Having set up its Asia office in Singapore last year, MediaMath is gearing up for bringing the “MediaMath culture” to the region.
In a conversation with DMA, Mr Williams explains that even though markets such as the US are leading conversations in programmatic buying but the interest in Asia towards real time bidding enabled trading, is increasing.
“Our experience has been that while key members of the marketing operating system understand the benefits of programmatic, it is important to show it with examples. The context of making media decisions by showing the right creative to the right user at the right time for the right price is important but it also means we are talking about 3 billion impressions a day globally. Allocating marketing dollars on that scale requires tools. Also, over a period of time, brands can start influencing conversations using programmatic channels. We are already seeing that in some markets and it is a future that would drive unprecedented results. I believe Asia will play a critical role in shaping up some of those conversations,” stated Mr Williams.
#1 You recently set up a Singapore office. What can be expected from you here?
One part of our global expansion is focussing further on the Asia region. We have set up our base in Singapore in the last quarter of 2013. We are in the process of hiring a Managing Director but we have already moved some of our best and brightest from London to Singapore to build the MediaMath culture. We would be expanding our staff by hiring locally as well. The learning curve in Asia is decreasing because people are learning from other regions. Global players like us are bringing experiences of the more mature markets and we are able to apply that much quicker here.
From a product standpoint, we take the approach that we are building the operating system for the marketer. We need to have solutions including mobile, display, video, social and search, and all of these have to talk to each other. It is challenging because we are faced with questions on how to manage a frequency cap between mobile, search and display. This is a difficult question for the industry per se and no one has nailed that yet.
That being said, mobile would be an area of focus for us. While we have a mobile solution, we are expanding the capabilities to include targeting components and expand our supply within each of the local markets and bring out a fully functional mobile offering that also talks cross channel to display, video and others. We are hoping to roll this out later this year.
#2. You mentioned that the learning curve in Asia is decreasing because of the experiences of the mature markets. But are markets like the US a good example to look up to, given that the dynamics are so different in comparison to the various markets in Asia?
That is a valid argument when you make a direct comparison but we can look up to the US or other mature markets to apply tactics on how companies dealt with fragmentation of media and changing media habits. We can look at these markets on how they bring the offline to online. In Asia too we are going to increasingly see the access to private exchanges and private pools of inventory supply. That started in the US as the concept of buyers’ need for exclusive right of inventory on the back of exclusive publisher relationship. Due to the localisation in the region, I see that becoming a hot topic that can bring many business benefits. Some great examples in the APAC already are Australia or Korea. We can also learn on how to use first party data or CRM data from customer’s databases to apply to different remarketing strategies, so there is a lot that is already being applied to the region.
#3. Do you agree with stakeholders who say that the definition of programmatic in China is different from rest of the region?
I would say it is still too early to make a comment on that. China has created a tremendous amount of its own technology. Some of these will evolve as they mature as a market. They have many components to focus on. I would say that a lot there is changing significantly, and for the better. There are many companies in the market that are working to advance the concept of transparency and programmatic buying overall. I believe we will see a decrease in the old buying models and the rise of the cost per thousand or CPC models.
#4. The percentage of marketing budgets to programmatic are still on the lower side. On digital media alone, we are talking about 5-10 per cent if you had to see industry figures. What should players like you do to convince marketers to allocated more towards programmatic?
Education – I think that is the answer to most of the challenges that programmatic may face. I must state that you will in any case see adoption rates increase in the region. However, I am firm believer that as more technologies comes in, the education level increases. The adoption levels, specifically on publisher side because they will get over the fear that programmatic is only going to lower CPMs (cost per millions), will increase. Publishers can monetise better and have more tools if they leverage the programmatic opportunity. Both sides of the spectrum – the buyer and the seller – will be more confident to make quality inventory available and mark more budgets towards programmatic.
#5. We have also heard marketers say that at times agencies are focussing too much on technology and lesser on creativity or even marketing fundamentals. Why do all things tech include a controversial angle to it?
The reason why technology becomes a hot button is because it is not understood well. The solution here as well is education because with that comes more openness to adopt technology and then truly build and innovate on top of it. If we focus on education, we can drive the right thought process on technology’s role in marketing. At MediaMath, we have a media marketing institute that delves in ground up education on digital marketing — from basics to platform. This is to encourage the new age media professional to really start thinking about all his business challenges and how technology can be used to solve it instead of living in a world of spreadsheets.
