Programmatic Marketing & the APAC Marketer

MediaMath is proud to announce the launch of “Programmatic: The Shifting Paradigm of Digital Marketing,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting. The study surveyed 300 APAC marketers on their adoption of programmatic and marketing technologies. 

As an Asia Pacific marketer, I constantly hear about new marketing technology innovations emerging from the US, Europe and other mature markets, almost on a daily basis. I daydream about the multitude of engagement possibilities that these innovations, such as marketing automation, content recommendation engines, virtual reality e-commerce and, most recently, programmatic marketing, can provide to marketers. While I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work very closely with cutting-edge technology (plus I’m naturally curious), I frequently wonder how many of my fellow marketers in this region are in tune with these advances or even aware of their existence. Quite unsurprisingly, all this technology can be overwhelming. However, there’s much at stake for those who don’t take the time to learn what’s possible with these new tools.

Get better with technology to do more with data

According to 500 chief marketing officers in this Economist Intelligence Unit report by Marketo, 86% believe they will own their organisations’ end-to-end customer experience mandate by 2020 and 78% expect to have significant influence over company technology decisions. The main driver of this shift? Customer data. Traditional enterprise IT vendors, such as Oracle, IBM, Adobe and Salesforce, are throwing immense amounts of their vast resources at building competitive marketing clouds. These are closed-loop marketing technology stacks designed to manage customer data throughout the customer lifecycle, from awareness to acquisition to retention.

What’s more, the already-converging martech and adtech worlds will further stretch the technical abilities of CMOs. Paid marketing, once typically serviced from outside of the CMO’s organisation, is increasingly being executed closer to home as marketers discover the real value of truly owning their data. Deploying data management platforms (DMPs) in-house is growing in popularity, as marketers search for deeper insights and learnings from their mass of Big Data.

For any aspiring CMOs, it is crystal clear: having a firm grasp of marketing technologies is imperative.

APAC is rising

What does the future look like for APAC? Back in February 2016, we commissioned Forrester Consulting to ask 300 senior B2C marketing leaders across APAC about their understanding and willingness to adopt programmatic marketing technologies. With MediaMath having a presence in the region for the last four years, the research, included in the paper “Programmatic: The Shifting Paradigm of Digital Marketing” released today, yielded insights that are consistent with our views on the market:

• Overall, 41% of APAC marketers have adopted programmatic in their practice, with Australia (48 percent), Japan (46 percent) and Singapore (46 percent) leading as the most mature markets in the region.
• The less developed digital markets, such as India (38%), Indonesia (30%) and Malaysia (36%), are also showing encouraging rates of adoption. This indicates that a large number of APAC marketers truly understand the value and benefits transformative digital marketing technologies can bring to their business.
• Furthermore, 82% of APAC marketers who have incorporated programmatic into their practice are either satisfied or highly-satisfied with their programmatic investments. An even better 96% indicated they will continue investing in programmatic technologies. It’s not hype: programmatic is the future and it’s already here to stay.

There are many additional insights from the study that we’ve included in the report, including the key benefits senior APAC marketers seek in programmatic as well as concerns and barriers that hinder their adoption. We encourage you to learn more about this study by downloading the PDF here.