• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, March 7, 2017

Ad fraud, fake news, brand safety, and transparency issues are major concerns for programmatic media buyers on the open exchange. Research findings released on Tuesday reveal that 81% of agencies and marketers surveyed reported that ensuring a "brand-safe" environment for advertising is a top priority when it comes to digital ad targeting. However, 71% of respondents reported that it’s hard to guarantee brand-safe environments while buying programmatically on open exchanges.

The research, conducted by the publisher Trusted Media Brands, Inc. (TMB), examined agency and marketer sentiment with regard to the programmatic media-buying process. The survey was commissioned by Advertiser Perceptions in January on behalf of TMB and polled more than 300 agency and client-side marketers from the Advertiser Perceptions Omnibus Panel.

Among the findings:

--The factors most important to marketers when making their digital buying decisions are audience target delivery (picked by 64% of respondents), viewability (54%), and brand-safe environments (46%). Over the next 12 months, half of digital/mobile advertisers plan to increase their spending on audience data targeting.

--While reaching the right audience topped the list of challenges among digital buyers, transparency was also a common theme, with 42% of marketers saying transparency of programmatic advertising placed will increase in the next 12 months.

--When asked how important audience target delivery, viewability, brand safety, CPMs, contextual relevance, and the ability to buy ads programmatically, 78% of participants said audience target delivery is the most important factor driving campaign effectiveness, followed by advertising creative (68%) and brand-safe environments (64%).

--When making digital ad-buying decisions over the next year, half of the digital advertisers polled said they planned to increase their spending on audience data targeting.

--More than half of the survey respondents said they don’t see programmatic transparency improving -- a sign that marketers’ demands for greater transparency on ad pricing, brand safety, and metrics will only become louder.

“Regardless of your position in the advertising ecosystem, fake news is a problem that's giving marketers second thoughts about programmatic solutions,” Rich Sutton, CRO, Trusted Media Brands, told Real-Time Daily via email. “While marketers like the convenience and efficiency of the open exchange, they’re realizing that their brands can’t thrive unless they’re in certain [premium] environments.”