Around the Net

Group M's Rob Norman: Programmatic Is Here To Stay, Stakeholders Should Collaborate To Improve It

  • Campaign, Monday, April 3, 2017 6:52 AM

Group M Global Diigital Officer Rob Norman takes a stand, calling on all industry stakeholders to collaborate around improvements and standards for programmatic media. Norman writes in Campaign that programmatic is here to stay, like it or not. Time to stop moaning and get to work on improving it. "Programmatic is nothing more than a mechanism for the automated connection of demand and supply, and of advertisers to consumers using data to increase relevance – and speed to capture opportunity. The people, the data and the technology behind the systems do involve real costs which need to be understood. In some markets like Asia, well-run programmatic leads advertisers to safer environments than direct buys because of the ability to tag, measure and optimise," Norman writes in the column. "Without question, there are challenges to be resolved in digital advertising and programmatic execution.  However, hyperbole and unfairly simple definitions of 'middlemen' are not helpful to the whole industry that is finding its way through all of this change. Programmatic is flawed if it uses bad data, accesses bad inventory or is deployed without foresight and without rules that keep brands and consumers safe. But programmatic technologies are doing far more good than bad; without it, brands simply cannot find their target audiences. This is true today and will be even truer tomorrow, and history shows that industries cannot resist automation." Norman writes that the success or failure of the tactic should be evaulated by the buyer "on the value received (the price of reach or outcome) compared to other channels and by the seller on yield compared to other sales channels."

Read the whole story at Campaign »

Next story loading loading..