Programmatic advertising to incorporate creative, brand in 2015

Programmatic advertising will expand out of its role purely delivering digital media impressions this year to incorporate creative and brand, a new predictions report claims.

According to Millward Brown’s seventh annual Digital and Media Predictionsreport, programmatic ads will become more human, seamless, efficient and easy to digest in 2015 by merging creative elements with existing media buying algorithms.

This will require marketers to build creative in new forms of dynamic and relevant storytelling that can be customised and seamlessly delivered by media buying algorithms, the research group said.

To achieve this, creative agencies will partner with developers or build up their own advanced programming capabilities and cross-functional abilities to produce and deploy smart ads with customisable creative elements, the predictions report stated. New skills will also be required that cross current silos and tap into creative, technical, media and research elements.

“To date, the debate around programmatic media has been firmly centred on the ‘how’ of operations and behavioural metrics such as cost per click,” noted Millward Brown global brand director, Duncan Southgate.

“In 2015, we expect marketers to be equally focused on the benefits programmatic may be able to bring to building meaningful brands and the opportunities to leverage it more creatively.”

Millward Brown also expected the rise and rise of a brand’s programmatic bidding strategy to raise questions about whether programmatic optimisation is damaging or enhancing a brand.

“Don’t lose sight of brand objectives in the rush to optimise programmatically based on behaviour,” the group warned marketers in its report.

Read more: Programmatic advertising: Digital marketing’s saviour or real-time headache?

Among Millward Brown’s other predictions are:

• Second-screen syncing will increasingly appear on media plans, stealing spend from TV, with sync technology putting the marketer and media agency back in control;

• Marketers will experience a mindset shift from ‘big’ data to streamlined and ‘intelligent’ data. This will be achieved by culling data assets, investing in analytic talent, and applying predictive analytics to understand the metrics best indicative of brand and sales growth;

• Micro-video platforms will become more important as new paid marketing opportunities emerge on these platforms, but only brands who know, learn and love these platforms will succeed;

• Customer-focused, location-based marketing will blossom, and help differentiate brands that seek to build personal relevance and meaning with consumers;

• Native advertising will be huge for those brands who partner with best-in-class publishers that strike the right balance between advertising and editorial

“Native, micro-video and location-based marketing are disparate technologies, but they are connected by marketers’ desire to deliver more relevant communication,” Southgate added. “A key challenge for marketers in 2015 will be balancing identification of the perfect marketing moment with a need to generate cost-effective scale and reach.”

Read more: Marin kicks off 2015 ad tech M&A activity with SocialMoov acquisition

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