Positive Programmatic
The programmatic theme for 2024?
I’ve started thinking a lot more in depth about 2024, and just typing the year out makes me feel odd. The Y2k computer crash hype feels recent, and I’m sure Spice Girls were number 1 only yesterday. However, things move on, and so does the programmatic industry.
Programmatic has taken its (sometimes fair) share of hits over the past decade. Industry reports, privacy advocates and even well recognized CMO’s have all had something to say. The programmatic industry is full of incredibly smart people, who know that this method of buying is not only the ‘now’ but also the future. Yes, many still think it’s stuck to just display banners, but the reality is it’s much more. This resilience will start to bear fruit in the coming 18 months.
We’re about to go into the ‘prediction season’, we’ll hear lots of thoughts on retail media, privacy sandbox, CTV, data clean rooms, AI etc. and how they’ll be reshaping the industry in 2024, but ultimately the over-arching theme which I think everything ladders back to is Positive Programmatic.
I won’t use this article to go into minutiae, but I did want to think about three big sub-themes that feed into positive programmatic.
1 - Positive media experiences
I chat with a lot of seasoned media planning professionals, and they always complain about bad advertising is now and how advertising used to be better back in the day. You know, the big strategic idea, that led to an awesome commercial that generated the watercooler moment. It’s hard to argue against their logic when you browse some of the major publishers/apps on the internet – ads flying out from everywhere, websites made to solely arbitrage paid for traffic and the quality of advertiser creative has diminished. This phenomenon is driven by supply and demand. On the one hand the internet offers anyone an opportunity to buy or sell advertising, but the downside is that it offers anyone an opportunity to buy or sell advertising!
I’m sure us industry professionals have also been asked by our friends and family if our phone is listening to us. Data has been thrown around the internet like confetti, but company approaches to data collection are improving and users are increasingly more aware of how and why ads are being shown to them.
The overlap in the Venn diagram of advertising to user experience is currently small, usually it’s one or the other. Something which we’ll see more of is how to grow that overlap.
Barely anyone wants to see ads, but if they do, how does the experience be a positive one? The move towards inclusion lists, regulated data use, smarter KPI’s and better creative will help improve the media experience for people.
2 - Positive partnerships
The pandemic was rough for many reasons, but in a business sense it put a lot of pressure on the supplier side of the industry, largely because many of the investors (advertisers) were struggling.
The introduction of Pitch Positive from ISBA and IPA in 2022 was such a good step forward on the new business front to try and introduce better behaviors for what has historically been an onerous process.
MediaSense and WFA ran an excellent study earlier this year called ‘Media’s got talent?’ and it had lots of great takeout’s, but my main takeaway was that talent isn’t being nurtured upwards towards more senior roles, due to lack of senior oversight.
AdTech companies are also swimming upstream, with service teams now directly interacting with advertisers and their agencies/consultancies.
I’ve seen firsthand how agencies are turning down new business pitches and consultancies turning down projects. It’s time to go beyond the formulaic SOW and rate card costs and look to longer-term partnerships with win win incentives.
The advertisers that do the best out of programmatic will be the ones that have programmatic partners who want to work with them and those partners bring talent upwards. Positive partnerships is a fun one to explore, and needs certain personality types and incentives to align.
3 - Positive innovation
I’ve said it before but the single best thing about the programmatic industry is innovation. It’s exciting to see companies emerging to solve a problem for a specific customer set. It’s also exciting to see big companies invest in product innovation that gets rolled out widely. Think about custom algorithms, attention measurement, in-gaming democratization, retail media, consumer data processing, creative management, how SSPs are evolving and much more. These things don’t just spring up by chance, they come about through opportunity and effort. I commend those who strive to innovate on their own or in big businesses, it’s what keeps the industry moving forwards – this often trial, and error approach should be rewarded.
Finally, I’m a programmatic champion. I get called ‘Mr Programmatic’ or ‘Programmatic Veteran’ regularly, often tongue-in-cheek but it’s because I’ve committed so much time/energy to a specific field. This year I’ve taken time away from work to think about whether programmatic really is the area is I want to focus on and whether anyone should care about it. I’ve tried to remove bias, I’ve spent hours upon hours making notes, and I’m still here. I still think programmatic is the best opportunity for advertisers and their agencies to maximize their investments when done correctly and it’s why I launched Impact Media (more on that soon).
Let’s see if that remains true come the end of 2024 (wah, there it is again!), I’m pretty sure if we all aim for positive media experiences, positive partnerships and positive innovation it will.