“We want to get 80%-85% of predictions right, not 100%. Or else we calibrated our estimates in the wrong way,” said Nate Silver, the American statistician famous for calling the 2008 US election win correctly (and overseer of the superb data story and visualisation site www.fivethirtyeight.com).
Making forecasts at this time of the year is both expected and makes the future-gazer a hostage to fortune. But, it only seems appropriate that we cast an eye over what 2015 is likely to hold for the programmatic landscape. If we hit 85% accuracy then we know we’ll at least meet with Nate’s approval.
With the combined help and insight of MediaMath Managing Director, EMEA, Dave Reed and Commercial Director Romain Gauthier, we have identified seven key trends that clients and agencies should have on their radar.
Here we go:
1.Cooperation and consolidation are on the cards in 2015 as the ‘ad tech’ universe matures. Expect acquisitions and mergers to accelerate and specific solution providers to be bought by larger marketing operating systems. MediaMath made acquisitions in 2014 including that of Upcast Social and will be looking at other strategic investments.
2.Data is the key to unlocking the benefits of programmatic trading and 2015 will see far better use of first and second party data. Companies will realise just how much high quality data they are sitting on and find better ways of integrating it into their strategy. Part of the trend will be an increase in the selling of first party data between brands. As brands reach a saturation point in marketing to their core consumer “they will need to find other audiences already engaging with, or expressing an interest in similar products,” says Dave Reed.
3.Retail will lead the pack as the vertical dedicated to accelerating testing and adoption of programmatic. Tesco has already bought a display advertising company with programmatic expertise while France’s largest retailer, Carrefour, is building a technology stack to improve data integration and activation. The travel industry won’t be far behind in pursuit of better segmentation and targeting via automated trading.
4.It will be vital to keep one step ahead of the consumer path to purchase and the crumbling cookie trail. With consumers moving seamlessly across devices and between offline and online, engaging the customer down the path to purchase will be paramount. Brands will need to develop a credible tracking solution. Allied to the cross-device journey is the challenge of attribution. Expect more sophisticated attribution models to emerge as forward-thinking companies move beyond last-click.
5.Social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter, will continue to expand their advertising capabilities and this trend will further blur the lines between earned and paid media. Driving social recommendation will be become a high priority for brands but they will demand greater agility in responsive strategies and ask for more robust metrics for campaign tracking from their technology partners.
6.There will be an increasing movement of ad spend budget from television to online video, and an accompanying increase in experimentation of programmatic trading in this arena. Romain Gauthier points out that connected TV ownership is widespread in France and 6.95m households are expected to switch over from pay-TV by 2016.
7.The debate over the definition of ad visibility should reach a conclusion. The IABs of 26 European territories are trying to reach agreement and a major prompt to action should be the fact Conde Nast and Group M have already devised a stricter visibility measurement model.