• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 24, 2016

For all the talk about programmatic media-buying’s impact on traditional media, a panel of agency experts said the transition is happening relatively slowly due to the historical “siloed” approach to media-buying and the lack of comparable metrics.

“Obviously, traditional [media] is bought on a different metric -- GRPs, TRPs -- when is the day that we’re going to have GRPs converted into impressions?,”

Ashley Evenson, Director, Ciceron Digital Media Group, said during the “Post-Web Programmatic: Radio, OOH, TV… Everything?” panel at the Programmatic Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe.

Fellow panelist, Eric Perko, Director of Media Services, Muhtayzik-Hoffer, concurred, noting that while adoption of programmatic should be “rooted in the audience you are trying to reach,” the industry still needs a “universal language” to enable that to happen.

He cited a previous agency experience in which his group figured out a way to convert digital buys into traditional metrics and freed up traditional budgets in the process.

“Converging everything in TRPs and GRPs really allowed budgets to flow to digital,” he said.

He criticized the industry’s siloed approach to planning and buying individual media, noting, “To a consumer, it’s all one thing. They’re not thinking in different buckets. To a consumer, it’s all one message.”