Roughly two-thirds of marketers will increase their programmatic ad budgets in the months ahead and the remaining third will reduce them, according to Programmatic Advertising-Strategies, Tactics
And Trends, a study by Ascend2.
Of those polled, 37% expect an increase of 10% or less. But 15% foresee a hike of 11-24%, and 14% anticipate an increase of 25% or more.
At the same
time, 70% see themselves as somewhat successful at achieving their strategic objectives, 23% as very successful or best-in-class, and 7% as unsuccessful.
Their major challenges at this moment
in time are:
- Audience targeting — 46%
- Budget allocation — 37%
- Personalization — 32%
- Achieving ROI — 30%
- Data
quality — 30%
- Ad creative — 22%
- Program and channel management — 21%
- AI/machine learning — 8%
Their main objectives
for programmatic ad campaigns are:
- Driving sales — 53%
- Lead generation — 47%
- Build awareness — 47%
- Customer retention —
36%
- Social engagement — 22%
- Lead nurturing — 18%
- Community building — 16%
- Message/offer testing — 14%
Their most
effective tactics include:
- Audience targeting — 73%
- Keyword targeting — 41%
- Retargeting — 27%
- Contextual/targeting
— 26%
- Geotargeting — 25%
- Testing creative — 22%
- Increasing automation — 20%
To conduct programmatic ad buying,
53% use both outsourced and in-house resources, while 29% rely on in-house staff only and 18% use outside specialists.
Ascend2 and its Research Partners surveyed a panel of marketing
professionals and research subscribers.