Programmatic crucial for delivering mobile ads at right time, place: IAB
While one of the significant advantages of programmatic buying on mobile is the ability to overlay data at an individual impression level, many marketers still believe programmatic is mainly for desktop, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
This knowledge gap is why the IAB today today released the Mobile Programmatic Playbook, addressing the unique advantages and challenges of programmatic buying in a mobile environment. The timing of the report speaks to the momentum that is building behind programmatic, with the IAB expecting automated buying strategies to reach a tipping point in 2015.
?If you believe that your message has to be more appropriately delivered to the consumer in the right place at the right time, than mobile programmatic needs to be explored,? said Carl Kalapesi, vice president of industry initiatives at IAB.
?For the majority of marketers, they do care about when and where, so mobile programmatic should be a key part of their marketing strategy and their audience mix,? he said.
Unique buying considerations
Programmatic is the automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory.
There are several buying considerations for programmatic that are unique to mobile.
One is data, with mobile presenting new targeting, buying and optimization opportunities.
The unique data parameters that may be available on mobile include device information, app information and geo signals.
?Data is clearly the biggest difference,? Mr. Kalapesi said. ?The types of data in a mobile environment are different.
?The most important and unique is the location data piece, which marketers can leverage in real-time and through user history to enhance campaigns,? he said.
?The speaks to the overall promise of programmatic, which is being able to deliver the right message at the right time.?
Data?s impact on creative
A second unique buying consideration for mobile is creative, with four main types of ad units available - banners, interstitials, video units and native units. However, banner ads are the most prevalent, accounting for approximately 70 percent of available impressions.
The IAB report suggests that many advertisers are starting to adopt programmatic buying of interstitial and native ads.
Data can have a significant impact on creative in mobile. For example, campaigns can deliver different creative in the morning, around lunch and in the evening. Or different creative can be delivered based on whether the phone owner is a man or a woman and where the user is located.
A third unique buying consideration is measurement, which is different on mobile compared to desktop because of a lack of cookies. Nascent solutions for addressing the absence of cookies include server postbacks and the identity-based targeting measurement enabled by Facebook, Google and others with large installed bases.
?The correct measurement around app installs and app use allow the optimization of campaigns to be much more effective, to adjust in real time and insure you are getting more bang for your buck,? Mr. Kalapesi said.
In the past two years, the makeup of attendees has changed at educational sessions about programmatic, per the IAB executive. While previously, many of the attendees were ?programmatic wonks,? now such sessions are filled with c-suite executives who are trying to figure out how to build a strategy and how to monetize for all of their publishers.
?One of the huge advantages of programmatic is that is allows you to overlay data at an individual impression level so you are buying individual impressions,? Mr. Kalapesi said.
?That some times get lost,? he said.
?We are trying to get that message across ? ultimately this is about data. That is what we have to start moving the conversation toward - value comes from impression-level data to make the right buy.?
Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York