Programmatic advertising was designed to deliver results during times of economic uncertainty. Right now, the economy is one more challenge marketers face in a landscape rife with change and transition. Privacy expectations are evolving, attention is fragmenting, and consumption habits are changing. Whether it is a recession or not, it is definitely a time of uncertainty, and programmatic is still the best option for delivering reliable outcomes and maintaining meaningful growth.
Programmatic was born in a recession
Scarcity breeds creativity. It is only when faced with a monumental challenge that monumental change becomes possible. Real-time bidding was first conceived in 2008 during The Great Recession. At the time, most media buying was done piecemeal, with brands and agencies negotiating prices with publishers directly or through ad networks. Success relied greatly on personal relationships, instincts, and luck.
Programmatic revolutionized the way advertisers thought about media buying. It introduced the concept of being inventory agnostic and challenged the notion that advertisers should pay the same amount for all impressions to all users on a website. With programmatic, advertisers could use data to target their ideal audience and pay to serve media only to that audience, creating massive cost efficiencies at scale. Advertisers could suddenly reach their audience across a much wider spectrum of publishers, creating the opportunity for new methods of achieving marketing objectives. And real-time insights meant faster optimizations, driving even further value.
The founding principles of programmatic–greater flexibility, efficiency, and capability–are still relevant today.
Programmatic CTV is being born in this time of uncertainty
Cord-cutting first started in 2008 with Generation Z canceling expensive cable subscriptions, but it was during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 that huge sections of the population drastically changed the way they consumed video.
While CTV seems to have gone mainstream with consumers, ad dollar share is lagging behind. According to data from Nielsen and eMarketer, broadcast accounts for 26% of time spent with video but gobbles up 58% of local budget and 63% of national advertising. Why? Uncertainty.
The explosion of streaming TV apps and online video platforms has resulted in a huge amount of uncertainty–as content shifts regularly, audiences jump from one subscription to another (while maintaining at least 3 in each household on average), and inventory becomes harder to access due to exclusive partnerships.
CTV also brings a tremendous amount of opportunity, in the form of audience data. There is the traditional panel data TV advertisers have relied upon for generations, but now that can be layered over smart device data and ACR data. Programmatic CTV leverages all of that data so advertisers can identify their audience and, using data-driven insights, create media strategies that reach those audiences when they are best positioned to be influenced.
How programmatic delivers certainty now
Intelligence. One of programmatic’s founding principles is using data to drive decisions. Working with programmatic opens advertisers up to greater audience, planning, and performance intelligence.
Targeting. You need to be sure that your advertising spend is reaching the right people at the right time and in the right place. Programmatic is built on the ability to target key audience groups for brands.
Transparency. Programmatic gives you a clear perspective of your outcomes, whether in TV, digital or OOH, all in one place.
Real-time measurement. Programmatic enables you to make changes within flight in order to compensate for unexpected changes to your plan, or even to simply go all-in on a working strategy.
Optimized for outcomes. Programmatic automates your workflow so that you can focus on the outcomes and not on the minutiae of running multiple advertising campaigns across many different channels.
With programmatic, advertisers can create campaigns that are priced on conversions that matter to their brand, such as acquisition costs, retention costs, and lifetime value.
Agnostic programmatic was made for economic uncertainty
Programmatic continues to deliver greater capability to target ideal audiences, increased efficiency in reaching those audiences, and more meaningful measurement in what impact a campaign had on the audiences. Regardless of what the economy does next or the next big technological advancement in advertising, programmatic will remain the best path forward for brands, because its foundation was built on delivering certainty, even in uncertain times.
At MiQ, we believe programmatic is the best opportunity for brands looking to maximize outcomes while minimizing risk and waste. That doesn’t mean it is easy. Programmatic advertising is an incredibly complex ecosystem that grows more fragmented and siloed every day. To fully take advantage of the benefits of programmatic would require a brand or agency to have partnerships with dozens of data suppliers, DSPs, and publishers. Managing an effective full-funnel, omnichannel programmatic strategy would require a team of data scientists, programmatic traders, creatives, and partner managers.
Or a partnership with MiQ. Learn more about how our agnostic approach to programmatic simplifies media buying for our clients while delivering the outcomes that matter most.
