As noted earlier on this blog, MediaMath is a proud sponsor of Winterberry’s recent “Programmatic Everywhere” white paper. The document explores the vast potential of programmatic technology for the online advertising industry – far beyond real-time bidding.
We had the unique opportunity to interview Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director at Winterberry Group. He was kind enough to provide us with some very enlightening responses to our questions.
In a series of three blog posts over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing our discussion. Here are the first few questions we asked Mr. Margulies:
So many people use the terms “RTB” and “programmatic” interchangeably. Others confuse the practice with the tools. What’s the real definition of programmatic?
You’re absolutely right. In fact, the terminology confusion really represents one of the key challenges we wanted to address with this paper—these terms have grown so pervasive that they’re often misaligned with what people mean (and even more often, with what they’re actually doing). To put it simply, “programmatic” refers to any approach by which a business establishes a replicable, automated, rules-driven process to govern their marketing interactions. When optimized, “programmatic” transactions really reflect the activation of much broader business strategies at the audience level, where they can deliver a meaningful impact. “RTB,” by comparison, represents just one of many potential programmatic use cases. It’s certainly the most mature and common of those use cases—reflecting an early recognition that the cumbersome media transaction was in desperate need of an overhaul—but it’s just the starting point of what we think will be a whole new approach to managing complex audience interactions.
How are most marketers using programmatic today?
As I said, RTB and similar approaches to auction-based digital media buying are the dominant use cases today. The tools exist to power these kinds of interactions, and virtually all constituencies of the media world—publishers, advertisers, agencies, technology intermediaries and the like—have a standing stake in ensuring that an infrastructure exists to promote a robust market for “audiences.” That said, the same tools that power real-time, rules-driven auctions can very easily be adapted to support a wide range of applications, and that’s where we’re seeing perhaps the most dynamic change in the programmatic landscape. When we think about the span of addressable programmatic use cases—like site content optimization, development of rich audience insights, alignment of targeted offers and content across media, etc.—the same basic business processes and supporting platforms apply.
What was the most surprising thing to come out of the research?
We kicked off this effort expecting our panel would share a litany of reasons why programmatic isn’t happening—why it’s difficult to accomplish, why they’re encountering internal resistance, how the tools have yet to meet their potential, etc. But the reality is that programmatic adoption is actually much more widespread—and the applications are much more mature—than we originally believed. The pockets of ongoing difficulty, likewise, aren’t nearly as daunting as we expected they would be. That less than a third of our panel said “resistance from internal process owners”—translation: sales teams blocking the path of progress because they see programmatic as a threat to their livelihoods—says a lot about how far the approach has matured over the last few years. And I think it says even more about how well media sales teams are now integrating programmatic strategies in broader conversations about media, audiences, data and the integration of all three in packages that deliver tangible results to advertisers.
Look for another entry in this series soon. Meanwhile, download Programmatic Everywhere: Data, Technology and the Future of Audience Engagement here.