• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer, July 29, 2014

In response to a recent IAB Europe report -- which found that 25% of European marketers have never heard of programmatic advertising -- the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe has released a whitepaper to further educate the industry.

“Programmatic trading remains a confusing mix of three letter acronyms, a swarm of potential solutions and a lurking fear that it’s going to put buyers and sellers out of a job,” writes the IAB in the executive summary of the new whitepaper.

The whitepaper points out that despite being lumped together as “Europe,” each country’s programmatic marketplace is unique. In the UK, for example, the whitepaper says the market is buyer-led. “Media is fragmented and the early adoption of programmatic was centralized on ad network optimization and then DSPs,” the report reads.

But in Germany, the market is shaped by sellers, per the whitepaper. It notes that consumers and advertisers in Germany are “more conservative -- and that in France, “the buyer/seller dynamic is more balanced.”

In the U.S. -- at least in recent months -- buyers have been shaping the market, the most obvious examples being Procter & Gamble’s decision to spend the majority of its digital media budget via programmatic and GroupM’s decision to pull out of the open exchanges.

After Advertising Age reported P&G’s intentions, Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, told Real-Time Daily: “[P&G] is basically saying, ‘If you want to work with us, you’re going to supply to us.’” But Wieser believes publishers are prepared for large buyers to make similar budget shifts, even if they don’t like it.

But that’s not to say sellers are only taking preparative actions. They are doing their fair share in shaping the market. For example, the “dark pools” -- or private marketplaces -- that keep pooling up could benefit big media companies.