• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, September 19, 2014

Headlines around programmatic usually fall into the category of huge companies -- such as American Express, Coca-Cola and Mondelez -- devoting the majority of display budget to automation or agencies and brands showing a distrust for the new technology. 

So it was very refreshing to see in The Drum today the debate being honed down to its most important element by Mondelez's VP of global media and consumer engagement, Bonin Bough. Programmatic is a tool to achieve marketing goals that will vary from one campaign to another, but the constant benefit will always be improved customer data. 

Investment in programmatic, as Bough points out, is seen as an investment in better data that creates a virtuous circle. You take data, use it to shape programmatic buying, you refine it, and then you reapply it. The good news, of course, is that this is not happening just one campaign at a time. As the term real-time buying (RTB) suggests, it's happening all the time. Every day your data is becoming more and more refined.

That's not to say it has to be your data. The beauty of automation is that you can seek to add a trusted third party's data and better inform your bidding process. I recently spoke to a fascinating advertising company, TwentyCi, which uses data is collects on people moving home to better inform advertisers who is in market for their service -- whether it be a solicitor at the start of the journey or a telco for a broadband deal once a new homeowner has moved in.

It was a very similar story when I recently chatted to a major car brand about its use of programmatic to hone down its data so it could figure out where people were in the purchase "funnel." By constantly refining data sets the company has been able to treble its success rates of people signing up for test drives or requesting brochures.

So the promise -- and the future -- of programmatic relies on this smart use of data that needs to be constantly refined, and crucially, controlled by the brand that is picking up the bill so they progress their understanding of the market and don't feed insights to their rivals via a shared agency or trading desk.

The importance of data and transparency around the brand, agency and tech vendor relationship will play a major role in MediaPost's RTB and programmatic event taking place in London on October 14th. It promises to be an enlightening day as all four sides of the relationship -- brand, agency, tech vendor and publisher -- take to the stage to discuss the issues of they day -- such as "am I paying too many people for my campaigns" and "where's my data, and who's got access to it."

There are still very limited slots available for brand speakers to join us on the day. Details on the event and an order form for tickets are available here.