Pro­gram­mat­ic spend is boom­ing. The Glob­al Fed­er­a­tion of Adver­tis­ers recent­ly pre­dict­ed that pro­gram­mat­ic would account for 28% of adver­tis­ing bud­gets by the end of 2018, com­pared with 17% just one year ago. eMar­keter is also bull­ish on pro­gram­mat­ic, pro­ject­ing that in the US alone, more than $65 bil­lion will be spent on pro­gram­mat­ic dig­i­tal dis­play ads by 2020.
Adver­tis­ers are under pres­sure to dri­ve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and meet more ambi­tious tar­gets, and pro­gram­mat­ic allows them to tar­get and reach more cus­tomers more cost-effec­tive­ly.
The process of reach­ing a large and dis­persed audi­ence is long and dif­fi­cult, and it’s only becom­ing more com­plex to man­age with­out mar­ket­ing automa­tion.
The mar­ket is shift­ing towards new plat­forms each day, requir­ing new deliv­ery mod­els, and pro­gram­mat­ic is the clear way to stay on top of change.
Cus­tomers con­tin­ue to embrace new devices, and pro­gram­mat­ic makes tar­get­ing sim­ple across dif­fer­ent plat­forms and medi­ums.
The ear­ly wins for pro­gram­mat­ic spend have under­stand­ably been focused on dig­i­tal dis­play, but it’s time to think big­ger. We all know video and TV will always be among the best ways to engage audi­ences, which is why brands are now explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of pro­gram­mat­ic video and TV On Demand. This has become even more impor­tant with cus­tomers now using such a broad range of devices to view con­tent.
The chal­lenge is that com­pa­nies have until now relied on third-par­ty plat­forms to dri­ve their video adver­tis­ing. This rela­tion­ship makes sense on paper. Major brands – the Danones and L’Oréals of the world – need to tar­get an incred­i­bly large audi­ence and require a secure dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form with both the inven­to­ry and reach to make this pos­si­ble.
But (and this is a major “but”) this set­up means brands have been hand­ing over con­trol of cus­tomer log data to exter­nal par­ties, which means they lose out on its dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing val­ue. More­over, in many coun­tries there has been a lack of com­mon stan­dards around how this data is bought, sold and exchanged.
Let’s take a clos­er look at France, where the pro­gram­mat­ic mar­ket is set for sweep­ing change. French brands and agen­cies have been able to buy anonymised log data from video adverts for some time, but they had to do so direct­ly from broad­cast­ers and explain exact­ly how this infor­ma­tion would be used for tar­get­ing. This made it impos­si­ble for them to dis­trib­ute video in a pro­gram­mat­ic way.
To para­phrase Guil­laume Charles, deputy man­ag­ing direc­tor of M6 Pub­lic­ité, Métro­pole Télévi­sion S.A., the French adver­tis­ing ecosys­tem had been steer­ing clear of pro­gram­mat­ic video because there wasn’t a suf­fi­cient­ly robust or secure stan­dard in place to make this fea­si­ble.
This is now chang­ing. As of 12th Sep­tem­ber, three of France’s lead­ing broad­cast­ers — France Télévi­sions, M6, and TF1 – joined forces with Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud to cre­ate SYGMA Data Video Access, the first tech­nol­o­gy stan­dard to com­bine pre­mi­um video inven­to­ry with logged cus­tomer data. With SYGMA Data Video access, pro­gram­mat­ic video has become viable and secure option for brands and agen­cies across the coun­try.
The lack of qual­i­ty inven­to­ry out­side of plat­forms like YouTube has been one of the biggest bar­ri­ers to adver­tis­ers man­ag­ing their own video adver­tis­ing, but SYGMA promis­es to even the play­ing field, at least in France. As my col­league Toc­cara Bak­er said at DMEXCO, one of our main aims at Adobe is to help brands take back con­trol over their cus­tomer data and con­tent so they can gain more trans­paren­cy into their ad spend. Our part­ner­ship with Télévi­sions, M6, and TF1 marks a major step for­ward in that regard.
Greater con­trol and a user-friend­ly expe­ri­ence will see pro­gram­mat­ic video explode in the com­ing years, not just in France but across Europe. Even more impor­tant­ly, direct access to cus­tomer data will allow brands to be more per­son­alised and tar­get­ed in their con­tent deliv­ery, ensur­ing the right peo­ple receive the right mes­sage at the right time in the right for­mat.
Learn more about SYGMA Data Video Access from the French announce­ment here, and check out our web­site to learn more about our pro­gram­mat­ic solu­tions for adver­tis­ers.