Top Highlights from AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O

AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O conference was held in San Francisco on April 10^th – 11^th this year. It’s a time that advertising, media, and tech companies come together to learn about buying, selling, and executing all things programmatic.

My favorite topics and themes from my two days were:

• Education -- Advertisers, agencies, and brands want subject matter experts either in-house or with their partners. These experts bring that extra layer of depth and insight into their programmatic buys and arm marketers to make the right strategic decisions.
• Client relationships -- Expectations of building trust by being responsive and knowledgeable are growing more than ever.
• It’s still muddy out there -- While the programmatic advertising space continues to grow, a lot of the same issues remain today and the industry is (still) looking for the best ways to solve them.

Along with these themes were a handful of enlightening sessions, below:

1. What’s in a name?

According to a study done by Ad Perceptions, DMPs are having a moment where advertisers can’t recognize who they are. When shown logos of popular and the most recognizable DMPs in the industry, only 30% of respondents were able to identify them. What’s surprising is the same study showed agencies and brands work with an average of 4.3 DMPs. The larger the client, the greater number of DMPs they tend to use. This was rationalized by advertisers feeling they had to do their due diligence, or because of dissatisfaction with their current partners.

The top 5 criteria that advertisers want most out of a DMP are:

• Ad inventory discovery
• Data collection
• Post campaign insights
• Client relationships/responsiveness
• Tech expertise

2. Omnichannel Buying Remains More Promise Than Reality

Presenter Joanna O’Connell from Forrester brought together the data to build a story that drives insight. According to Joanna, if you find your consumer one-to-one and don’t understand the context of which you are finding them, you’re not doing a good job. It’s no longer about finding your consumer one-to-one but rather about ‘one-to-moment.’ Every moment of a consumer is different than the one that came before. It’s not simply about finding the consumer, but rather about finding them in the moment AND understanding them. What that looks like for one person will look different for another. Find your consumers wherever they need you – whether that be online or in store.

3. How To Train Your DSP

Make your DSP work for you. Jounce Media says, “Your DSP does what you tell it to do, so tell it to do what you want it to do.” Its philosophy for training your DSP were around two main ideas of choreography and coaching. The core concepts of each are:

• Choreography: This enables marketers to codify business rules for how campaigns should bid. This gives marketers the control to tune bidding strategies. Similar to a choreographer planning for their big show, this is pre-planned by the marketer.
• Coaching: Much like how a coach can enable a successful game, DSPs are enabling marketers to supply richer performance feedback to improve automated bid optimization. This marketer is able to provide feedback to the DSP on what is working and what’s not, making the bidding logic smarter.

4. Connected TV Goes Primetime

It’s no secret that Connected TV usage is growing per day. As an industry, we have seen connected TV grow by 10x in 2017. Traditional viewership has declined and people are not watching cable TV as much as they used to. The time for Connected TV is already here as 1 in 5 hours of TV consumption is done on a streaming device, and by 2020, half of all viewing will be via a Connected TV. But, it’s not as simple as saying that people are moving from one device to another, as many people are consuming on Connected TV and cable because while we are seeing a rise in Connected TV usage, 80%+ of US households still have cable (and many people are using both). The bigger story here is that for many advertisers, it justifies a bigger spend investment in this category.

There were many more insightful topics from the conference – some with a more immediate application (PMPs, issues with third-party data), and others more conceptual (blockchain). If you are a digital media professional, I highly recommend attending the Programmatic IO conference – the next one is in New York! It’s always valuable for me to hear from other industry experts and get to talk programmatic advertising.

Learn more about the Connected TV advertising opportunity with Centro.