Gonzalo Garcia, Country Manager for Spain at MediaMath, recently wrote for Marketing News detailing his programmatic forecast for this year. Below is an English translated version of the article, or you can read the original article in Spanish.

Programmatic is becoming a vital part of the Spanish digital advertising landscape and the future looks bright with penetration expected to exceed 30% by 2017. The willingness of brands to explore this trading model makes the programmatic market exceptionally dynamic, so what does the coming year have in store for programmatic in Spain?

Programmatic adoption will escalate
Programmatic adoption in Spain is growing faster than expected with a 43% increase in programmatic spend reported this year. We can expect to see programmatic growth continuing to accelerate over the coming year as brands and agencies experiment with the technology and understand that it can be used for a variety of marketing tactics, not just performance-based advertising. The market will also expand significantly as new technology providers emerge to take advantage of the business opportunities created by programmatic.

Data will be used holistically across channels
As the industry embraces programmatic, the data and insights generated will begin to be used holistically across all channels. Marketing activity that was previously undertaken in silos – such as mobile, search, and video – will share programmatic data to inform activity. While banner advertising currently accounts for the majority of programmatic spend in Spain, this will begin to change as channels such as video and social are absorbed into programmatic. Spend on programmatic video alone will grow from €15 million to €41 million in 2016, escalating to €98 million by 2020. Alongside this enhanced use of data to drive cross-channel marketing, brands will begin to adopt ‘always on’ programmatic activity rather than restricting the use of the technology to standalone campaigns.

Brands will seek programmatic knowledge
Brands are increasingly looking for efficient ways to understand, optimise, and communicate with their customers, and programmatic is key to making this a reality. Armed with the knowledge that programmatic will be central to their future marketing activities, 2016 will see brands seeking direct education on the benefits of the technology and how it works. While brands won’t necessarily look to take programmatic in-house, they will certainly want to take a more active role in working with their agencies to incorporate programmatic into their overall marketing strategies.

Programmatic jargon will be simplified
The demand for increased programmatic understanding will make education and training a major focus in 2016. This process will include simplifying the overly complex jargon that has developed around the technology, providing a clear explanation of concepts from RTB to programmatic direct. Over the coming year, we will see the industry working together to eliminate complexities and demystify programmatic, with technology providers leading the way. This simplification will allow programmatic to become more firmly established within the marketing landscape and progress into more advanced mediums such as programmatic TV.

The next twelve months will be an exciting time of growth and evolution for the programmatic market in Spain. The region will continue to attract ever-increasing levels of advertising spend, and disparate channels and tactics will be brought under the programmatic umbrella, propelled by a focus on holistic consumer-centric, data-driven marketing.