Almost Two-Thirds Of B2B Marketers Buy Or Sell Ads Programmatically, Up From 54%

A new report from Dun & Bradstreet finds that 65% of B2B marketers currently buy or sell advertising programmatically, up from 54% a year ago, and that B2B programmatic spending by these marketers will grow to an expected 70% adoption rate in 2017. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they planned to increase such spending by more than 25%.

Released on Tuesday, the report surveyed 221 B2B marketers to find that Facebook is the top channel for paid targeting, with a 63% adoption rate vs. 39% for LinkedIn, and 36% for Twitter. Also, when B2B marketers were asked to identify leading obstacles to programmatic adoption, 42% cited targeting the right audience. Other key challenges were measurement and metrics (cited by 34%) and lack of knowledge (29%).

The report characterized programmatic advertising as at a “tipping point.”

Other findings:

-- A key challenge to programmatic adoption is that sales-related metrics are used to evaluate success.

-- Conversions and leads were two of the most important programmatic KPIs identified by B2B marketers. But many still appeared to be using metrics (such as Web site traffic) that don’t directly relate back to bottom-line results.

-- More than 40% of B2B marketers are already using a data-management platform to analyze customer data. The report found that more than 70% are using or plan to use data-driven tactics such as look-alike, cross-channel, and cross-device targeting.

“The use of programmatic within B2C campaigns has taken off, but what this report showed us is that B2B’s adoption of programmatic is catching up. 2016 was the tipping point—more than half of the marketers we talked to bought or sold programmatically this year," Rishi Dave, CMO, Dun & Bradstreet, told Real-Time Daily via email. "In 2017, as targeting becomes even more accurate and B2B programmatic really begins to scale, we expect to see marketers dramatically increase their spend, as they focus even more on data-driven tactics.”

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