Industry experts expect programmatic investment to dramatically grow in the coming years due to the benefits of automation, real-time measurement, sophisticated targeting, and optimised ROI.
At the center of digital advertising’s transformation lay programmatic, the technology that enables advertisers to reach their audiences through multiple digital touchpoints and at scale. Programmatic advertisers are looking ahead to 2022. This automated and growing method for buying ads has quickly become crucial for media buying strategies. By the end of 2022, programmatic advertising spending is projected to reach nearly $100 billion (eMarketer). According to Integral Ad Science’s latest research, over 50% of media experts say most of their digital advertising budget is transacted programmatically. Industry experts expect programmatic investment to grow in the coming years due to the benefits of automation, real-time measurement, sophisticated targeting, and optimized ROI dramatically. As we usher into the year of the “Tiger,” here are a few programmatic strategies that’ll help your programmatic campaigns soar like the tiger’s roar.
Test new strategies:
Lack of transparency in the programmatic ecosystem and supply path continues to be a crucial challenge for advertisers.
Research indicates that more than half of publishers operate at least one supply path that experiences transaction failure. Today, as newer and more lucrative mediums come into play, advertisers manage more inventory and get involved in multiple auctions. This significantly increases ad tech tax and overall supply chain cost.
Therefore, it only makes sense for brands to demand better transparency of the supply chain, to understand how and where their money is being used. Nestle put this into practice during a live campaign by using IAS’s Total Visibility to identify that 3.77% of unsafe impressions represented 9.23% of their total media spend. Nestle blocklisted the domain within six hours and directed spend away from brand-damaging placements towards safe media & quality impressions.
Ascertain your programmatic advertising goals:
At all stages of the sales funnel, the focus on serving ads in a quality environment is imperative for marketers – the same audience in a low-quality Vs. a high-quality environment will elicit vastly different results. Relevant and safe environments with solid attention and time spent will aid awareness metrics; building brand recall where the association is critical while also driving conversions lower in the funnel where users are triggered into action. Brands that succeed will be the ones who will focus on quality and balance this with efficiency-seeking.
The IAS MQR report in the first half of the year 2021 found that increasing investment in programmatic drove down brand risk in Singapore and Indonesia. The programmatic mediums proved to be safer, given the increased control provided to traders. Traders of programmatic video are generating far lower risk and fraud rates across their investments through optimization strategies such as pre-bid targeting. By leveraging IAS pre-bid optimization, a CPG giant reduced their average programmatic fraud levels from 9.0% to 1.1%. A Dentsu client improved their brand suitability block rate by 79% and increased their click-through rate by 18.5% by mirroring their content avoidance post-bid settings. As video consumption increases underpinned by the rapid growth of connected TV (CTV), the control and scale provided by programmatic will become even more essential. As technology evolves, programmatic will facilitate investment into impressions that are viewable, brand-safe, fraud-free, and served in the correct geo, and drive value beyond verification with privacy compliance, brand suitability, and contextual targeting combined with enriched channel-level insights.
Activate first-party data:
Many in the market are not confident in activating data-driven buying strategies. I think a lot of this stems from uncertainty on the available solutions, with marketers unsure who they should integrate with or if a particular solution can deliver the results, with added pressures on Publishers. Fortunately, publishers have been willing to work with marketers’ first-party data, and in some cases, publishers in Singapore and Indonesia have built audience solution teams to service the market. Marketers overall are after the best performance. If these new ID solutions, combined with data, are producing better performance than their traditional setup, this will drive a shift in spending.
Programmatic buying has become the backbone of digital advertising. Still, the programmatic landscape faces scrutiny from advertisers concerned about transparency, brand safety, and evolving targeting challenges. Accounting for 68% of total global digital media spending, programmatic tactics will be expected to deliver results. In 2022 I expect Southeast Asian marketers to increasingly leverage the efficiency of data-driven buying to effectively and appropriately reach their desired audiences. All in all, advertisers who treat Programmatic as a science, with minor refinements, robust planning, and adapting to results while questioning common beliefs will succeed against those who go along for the ride.
