• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 24, 2015

Will the programmatic media and marketing industry move toward verticalization? Like all other forms of marketing, it sort of depends on what kind of marketer you are, according to panelists on the “Does One Machine Fit All?” panel at the Programmatic Insider Summit.

“We believe fiercely that the general approach is better than the vertical approach,” asserted James Green, the CEO of Magnetic, adding, “With site retargeting you need to have access to media everywhere.”

He said from a media reach point of view, programmatic audience buying is going to work better “the more ubiquitous you are and connected to media.”

That said, his fellow panelists felt there were markets that might be better served via verticalization strategies, whether they make media efficiency sense or not.

Lesley Pinkney, vice president-digital ad multicultural shop Walton Isaacson said minority audiences may be a good example of that.

“The programmatic space has not necessarily prioritized Hispanic audiences, black audiences,” she noted.

Rich Devine, global senior vice president-media services at WPP’s Possible unit, said it really depends on the sentiment of the agency’s clients, noting that Possible services a “B-to-B” client who “know they’re in a vertical and they fiercely take price in that.”

How to activate that B-to-B verticalization via programmatic technology, he said, isn’t always clear, but it is definitely a factor in terms of client perceptions. For example, he noted that marketing automation Marketo is general by nature, but when Possible and its client were evaluating it and a competitor Mintigo that at least claimed to have vertical B-to-B expertise. That, said Devine, was enough to get the the client “on board” with Mintigo.