Programmatic Buying will only keep changing for better: Amit Gupta

Last decade has seen the fastest change in human lifestyle pattern with technological advances, be it social networking, e-commerce or availing services / content on digital platforms. All of these have become inherent part of our daily routine, since they  have marginally made life more simpler & efficient. The same advancement has been seen in digital media.

The growing advent of digital media against the traditional media has seen steep shift in content consumption & thereby increase of advertising budgets on digital. Due to low capital cost requirement & being more people driven, digital platforms have witnessed high number of start-ups launching their sites / apps across various verticals. This has created lots of options for brands to reach out their audience, but at the same time has increased the complexities to buy across the wide spread & options available. The complexities starts right from manually buying the inventory to managing & optimising performance across. Besides this, transparency has always been a bigger question.

Programmatic Buying (PB) not only is the answer to these problems but also has lots more to offer. Lets list down the benefits one by one and analyse them.

• PB at its core is the process of buying inventory through automated process, thus reducing manual intervention to a huge extent though not completely. Where does the inventory come from? The inventory is bought through demand side platforms (DSPs) which are connected through various Ad exchanges. This ad exchanges have inventory supplies of various sites & apps.
• PB drives cost efficiencies for both advertsiers & publishers by addressing the supply – demand gap & working on Real Time Bidding (RTB). Brands have been able to achieve efficiencies as high as 60% in some cases.
• PB helps reducing media spillages. The platforms working on PB also offers building up audience data which can be sliced & diced to any levels depending on their behavioural attributes or browsing actions taken by users. This can be later used for retargeting or micro targeting.
• PB offers flexibility for customised communication to the audience set created based on demographic, geographic or behavioural attributes. For example a brand’s older consumer might still buy it because of the brand loyalty, whereas the younger consumer might be attracted by the celebrity endorsement. This customisation can really help the delta of brand lift or have a greater impact of purchase intent across both the age groups.

This opens up huge scope & newer avenues for Data driven marketing. Brands have now the opportunity to enrich & reach out their first party data (registered users or customer data) based on their behavioural attributes. Multiple forms of third party ready to use validated data will be available from publishers & telcos.

PB is here to not only stay for longer, but will have lots more to offer with time. Alongwith new technology developments it will bring new breed of marketers & data scientists to reach out consumers. Brands / Publishers embracing this earlier will definitely have an edge over competition. This goes into saying with the famous proverb “The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change” & PB will only keep changing for better.

(Authored Article by Amit Gupta, Managing Partner, Httpool India)