• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, January 15, 2015

At the risk of beating a dead horse, Millward Brown has released its own set of 2015 predictions. The research agency reserved several of its predictions for programmatic, data analytics and ad tech in general.

Millward predicts that brands will dive deeper into the programmatic well, something that had a visible impact on the market in 2014. As a result, Millward believes bidding algorithms could be tweaked in the year ahead as brands guide consumers down the “funnel.”

“To overhaul programmatic bidding inputs is a major challenge,” writes Millward in its report, “but marketers will achieve this incrementally in three stages.”

The company believes that in the near term advertisers will use new methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of programmatic campaigns. In the medium term, Millward speculates that advertisers will encourage programmatic partners “to feed normative brand effectiveness learning data analyzed by site, ad, creative, and audience into programmatic targeting algorithms.”

And finally, in the long term Millward forsees advertisers using rich audience psychographic and attitudinal data in programmatic algorithms to push “beyond existing industry targeting variables.” 

Talk of overhauling programmatic bidding inputs could also be a byproduct of an increased interest in multi-touch attribution, which encourages marketers to hold various advertising channels -- be it TV, social, video or email -- to different standards.

In a similar vein, Millward also believes “Big Data” will become “Intelligent Data” this year. “In 2015, marketers will harness the power of Big Data by culling data assets, investing in analytic talent, and applying predictive analytics to understand which metrics are indicators of brand and sales growth and which are touchpoints for increased marketing investment and focus,” writes Millward. We saw this prediction take a different form in PubMatic’s set of 2015 predictions, with the SSP contending that data analytics would shift from “descriptive to prescriptive” this year.

Thirdly, Millward predicts that programmatic will become a larger part of the creative process this year. “The evolution of programmatic means marketers must challenge their creative and media agencies to work together to leverage the latest consumer insights,” the reports says.

The “programmatic creative” drum has been beaten before, and while some companies are using real-time data to programmatically adjust creative, others contend that programmatic is killing creativity.

Millward Brown’s full report can be found here.

"Data analysis" image via Shutterstock.