Programmatic is helping to bring change to many areas of the marketing landscape, from how we buy and sell display advertising and video media, to how budgets are spent, to the very optimisation potential of any given digital campaign.

However despite its increasing importance, over half of today’s marketers still rate their programmatic knowledge as very poor, poor or average.

It goes to show that a little bit of education is all that is needed to unlock the potential of programmatic, and that more traditional means of advertising should not be made redundant just because there is new technology to play with.

Last week a Google commissioned report by BCG revealed that publishers that base advertising strategies in both traditional direct and programmatic, can boost revenues and CPMs to outperform the market.

However many publishers are failing to capture the opportunity. The report, Programmatic Path to Profit for Publishers blames this on publishers approaching programmatic without a clear strategy. 

The report goes on to state that: 

  • Fewer than 25% of the publishers studied regularly translate data analysis into sales initiatives
  • Publishers continue to approach programmatic in a reactive manner, often delegating programmatic decisions to operational teams
  • Less than 25% of programmatic team time is spent on activities that create value
  • In a typical month, publishers spent an average of just 11 hours on value-creating activities and 48 hours a month on admin tasks

There are lessons to be learnt out there, with many brands showing a great deal of success when treating programmatic advertising as core to their businesses, while at the same time continuing to increase traditional direct sales and total CPMs.

One publisher built programmatic revenue to more than 50% of its digital revenue while increasing direct sales and total CPMs.

Condé Nast UK, in its first year of programmatic sales, discovered that 60% of its top 50 advertisers that buy programmatically were entirely new customers.

American Express aims to be 100% programmatic within 18 months and a major North American broadcaster aims to completely replace direct sales with programmatic guaranteed within the next two years.

Learn more

Our one-day conference Get with the Programmatic returns on Tuesday 29 September, after rave delegate reviews in 2014.

Join Econsultancy and Marketing Week in London for the only brand-led conference of its kind. Promising lively debate and honest peer-to-peer learning, the brand-driven conference will deliver content that covers the whole programmatic ecosystem, suitable for both brand and agency-side marketers, and publishers.

Book your early bird ticket before 31 July.