• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, September 10, 2015

Despite the fact that programmatic has a growing number of naysayers and that, for the most part though not entirely, it's the basis of delivery for an ad unit that doesn't work anymore -- the ad banner -- a new study predicts programmatic advertising will do just fine in 2016.

The survey, conducted by ad platform Jivox, queried 165 ad agency executives about the challenges, opportunities and trends in the programmatic space. So what's set to take off? 

According to Jivox, "the survey revealed a momentary gap between advertisers’ current plans to offer programmatic creative as part of their digital ad strategy and immediate client-side demand, suggesting an early adopter market that is set to accelerate in 2016 as brands, agencies and technology vendors demonstrate the value of programmatic creative advertising to drive consumer engagement."

Jivox believes the focus will shift from programmatic media buying to programmatic creative. Jivox CEO Diaz Nesamoney said: “Programmatic media buying using data was the first big wave of technology driven disruption in the digital advertising market. The next big wave is programmatic creative. As brands have harvested the efficiencies and performance of programmatic media buying, they are turning to relevant creative -- delivering the right message to the right person at the right time using data and technology.”

Key findings from the study include:

• 87% of advertisers are incorporating programmatic into their ad-buying strategies
• 66% of responding advertisers now use programmatic solutions for nearly one quarter of their ad buys
• 64% of advertisers are making data-driven decisions about optimization and customization of advertising content
• Nearly a third of advertisers are using data such as location, timing and weather to inform creative variations
• Nearly 40% of responding advertisers agreed that data-driven dynamic advertising is the most important component of their digital advertising strategies in 2015, with programmatic media-buying a close second

In case you wanted to know, the study -- no surprise -- comes on the heels of Jivox’s announcement last week that a "MAJOR UPGRADE to the Jivox IQ Dynamic Ad Platform is now available that delivers an advanced set of HTML5 features, including the first-ever functionality for building complex animations and video in HTML5."

The full study in all its glory is here.