• by Felicia Greiff , April 26, 2016

Programmatic is a major undertaking, especially for young companies like Jet.com, which launched nine months ago.

At a Forrester marketing forum panel called "The Practice of Programmatic," Sumaiya Balbale, VP-marketing, Jet.com, recommended asking if your company is ready for the internal commitment the technology requires, as well as the data aggregation that powers it.

"There’s a lot of investment in making it work," she said. Jet.com, an e-commerce startup with more than $500 million in funding, started out with  programmatic capabilities even though it didn't originally have the data to power it. The reason: to quickly understand its audience and test many different groups. 

The panel host, Forrester Senior Analyst Richard Joyce, asked the marketers onstage if they preferred a best-in-breed versus single-vendor approach in their programmatic experience. 

Phillip Ma, manager of brand advertising and content, JetBlue Airways, said his company is looking for the best partner that is quick on its feet. 

Balbale said her company will evaluate based on expertise sharing and product road-mapping. 

Jennifer Dalipi, senior director-digital marketing and media at Coty, said that it comes down to how much the tech partner wants to work with her company. Part of that is education, she said, "allowing us to get under the hood to see what we need to take back to the organization." It's paramount to get everyone to see the value in the tech, she added.