• by Brian McHale , Op-Ed Contributor, April 12, 2017

For the past few years, our industry has been extolling the virtues of programmatic media buying. The largest of the large marketers started the rallying cry by stating that they would move a majority of their media budgets to programmatic on accelerated time tables. That certainly made everyone notice and the floodgates soon opened. But it wasn't as easy as it sounds. Nothing ever is.

The result was imperfection. Some suppliers and agencies lost their minds and became very non-transparent when it came to programmatic fees. That came back to bite a few people, especially the publicly held holding companies. The majority of the independent, U.S. based agencies remain transparent and try to do right by their clients every day.

Many others took their eye off of the “adjacent programming” ball and assumed the brand content would only appear next to appropriate content. As we’ve seen recently, the latest ad-tech fraud story has YouTube under fire — and they won’t be the last. Marketers are pulling millions of dollars off of YouTube to avoid their ads being placed next to inappropriate videos.  

Technology is awesome. It continues to make marketing one of the most exciting disciplines around. But technology in the hands of junior executors or agencies only concerned with maximizing their profit leads to very poor execution. And, technology in the hands of people who are only interested in pushing the button and getting on with the next task creates a scenario where no one really knows what they are getting for their money.

For the foreseeable future, we need to keep smart, strategic humans in the equation to make sure brands are truly getting what they want. This means brands also need to keep paying agencies for the resources and technology it takes to monitor these wonderful technological advances. Yes, ad-tech can do some incredible things including saving time and money, but someone competent has to be minding the store if we want to get closer to perfection. This same principal of keeping human nuance in the equation applies to the collection and use of data as well. 

Now, I realize that by writing this that I run the risk of being seen as anti-programmatic or ad-tech. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Our agency has embraced where our industry is going. We’ve been doing a significant amount of programmatic buying for years. We’re also data-driven. Like any good marketer should do with any available resource, we maintain control of the resource and put checks in place to make certain we are faithfully executing the plan. Technology or not, a great plan poorly executed isn’t a great plan anymore, it’s a waste of time and money.