Data, Audience, Automation: Party is on
With a recent survey from MediaQuark showing 75 per cent of APAC advertisers plan to increase spend on data driven marketing in 2015, this promises to be the year that programmatic marketing finally attracts serious budgets from brands across the region. Here are my predictions for 2015:
1. Programmatic goes mainstream with marketers
According to recent studies more than two in three marketers are now using programmatic in one form or another. In fact programmatic might even already have become mainstream over the course of 2014, certainly in advanced markets. This trend will continue in 2015 as more marketers realise the benefits of programmatic in their paid media programs. However, it’s important to remember that there is a lot more to marketing than programmatic, and a lot more to programmatic than paid media. Which brings us to the next point.
2. Everything is data driven and programmatic
2015 will be the year that data, audience and automation take the spotlight in all marketing. Most marketers have been sitting on valuable customer data for years, but many of those data signals haven’t been fully put to use. Brands will be investing in data management platforms (DMPs) that allow them to own and activate their data across multiple channels. And understand their consumers in new and valuable ways. The bidder with built in DMP may go the way of the dinosaur as marketers begin to take full control of their data strategy. Programmatic techniques will also increasingly enter other aspects of marketing from websites to display. More on this later.
3. Attribution killed the CTR?
Attribution has been a hot topic this year, and in 2015 we think advertisers will be investing even more to understand the full value of their marketing activity. There is no single right way to attribute value to different channels, but using insights acquired from multi-channel and post view conversion tracking is increasingly worth the time and resource. Maybe 2015 will be the year the click finally dies? If programmatic wants to get involved in the big brand budgets – as we think it will – this has to be the case.
4. Brand money comes to programmatic
Brand money will finally come to programmatic at scale. Driven primarily by video, and enabled by smart data, audience delivery and a grown up approach to measurement. Site based buying won’t disappear quite yet, but, for the first time, we may see the smarter brands making decisions to place TV sized budgets into automated campaigns. Agencies will need to move more resources to programmatic, and fast. In fact we think that 2015 may see the regeneration of the media agency as programmatic forces sweeping changes to internal structures to service big brand advertisers and their programmatic budgets.
5. Fraud and viewability take the headlines
Marketers are more aware of fraud and viewability than ever before and that’s a great thing for programmatic. Innovative new technologies are helping media buyers and sellers identify issues, and the industry will continue to take important steps in rooting out the bad actors. Sadly, not all fraud will be eradicated in 2015. The industry has yet to wholeheartedly adopt new technology designed to catch those who refuse to play by the rules, and this must change. There will always be fraud in advertising, but this may be the year that the industry finally gets serious.
6. Dynamic creative gets smarter
2015 will be the year that the data driven programmatic techniques seen in media delivery start to impact our approach to creative. Dynamic creative has been used in retargeting for a while, but it has not yet been effectively applied to branding. 2015 is set to be the year that dynamic creative goes mainstream as display is personalised in real time using variables such as audience segment, geo-location and demographics. There will be an industry wide shift towards making better use of data to drive dynamic marketing. Long gone are the days when agencies could launch a carefully designed ad campaign and then leave it to run.
7. Mobile tracking and measurement are solved
The biggest hold up to mobile advertising budget is the fragmented state of delivery and tracking – the first party cookie issue. Over 2015 we expect advertising and marketing technology platforms will continue to make inroads into mobile tracking and measurement, particularly as mobile visits continue to grow. Device recognition and cross platform attribution will not only make mobile more robust, but may do away with the idea of mobile as a separate channel all together. The carrot? Facebook and Google deliver huge mobile revenues built on simple mobile delivery, and seamless mobile and desktop integration.
The write up is part of the DMA Annual Report ‘What’s Trending 2015‘.
To book your own hard copy of the Annual, write to marketing@digitalmarket.asia
