Opportunities For Global Expansion of Programmatic Expertise [REPORT]

Virtually all large American publishers (98%) are now pursuing programmatic marketing strategies at home, but fewer—72 percent—have moved to deploy the same in support of their audience development efforts abroad. Despite this current discrepancy, international publishers active in this burgeoning market trend intend to neutralize the deployment gap over the next two years, according to a recent survey and whitepaper from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Winterberry Group released, “Going Global: Programmatic Audience Development Around the World.” The study’s key findings overall showcase an international growth opportunity for companies with expertise in building programmatic advertising programs, and detail the priorities of U.S. and global companies seeking to expand beyond their traditional geographic borders.

Though their international efforts have largely been focused on markets with longstanding cultural and language ties to the U.S—such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, publisher respondents said they have every intention to expand their global programmatic marketing programs to a wide range of other markets over the next two years, with Brazil and China factoring most prominently among those countries likely to see new investment over that period. In considering which new regions to add to their programmatic portfolios, respondents ranked the “availability of third-party data” as the most important prerequisite for success (52%).

Conversely, the biggest roadblock to global expansion is a “lack of understanding of audience development,” with 34 percent of the study’s marketer, ad tech executive and publisher respondents seeing this as a problem. Government regulation was found to be a much smaller concern, with only 23 percent ranking it among their top three barriers to programmatic expansion.

To encourage worldwide expansion of programmatic marketing, the paper highlights seven key factors that typically characterize markets that are well suited for new or expanded investment:

•     Embrace of the Audience: Advertisers in each market must be able to discover audience trends based on data and use these observations as the foundation of their advertising, marketing or media strategies
•     Programmatic Know-How: Advertisers in each market must have a deep understanding of programmatic advertising and how it relates to specific use cases
•     A Transparent, Open Market Culture: Marketplaces must be free and fair for all entrants, with significant protections against fraud and other adverse effects
•     Data: Third-party audience data must be readily available and legally obtained via consumer-friendly means
•     Technology—and the Means to Use It: The technology required to identify and develop audiences must be readily available, as well as the expertise required to utilize it
•     Standards in Measurement and Accountability: Each market must commit to developing and maintaining a set of universal standards to govern audience identification, measurement and valuation
•     An Opportunity to Build Scale: Each market, either independently or combined with other markets, must offer an audience population that drives value for all parties

“The promise of ‘programmatic everywhere’ is on the verge of being realized,” said Patrick Dolan, Executive Vice President and COO, IAB. “It is clear that programmatic advertising strategies have paid dividends for U.S. publishers, brand marketers, ad technology vendors and others in the industry, and now it is time for this practice to benefit marketplaces around the world.”

“While programmatic has succeeded wildly in the U.S., there is significant room for growth on an international scale,” said Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “By paying heed to the insights found in this report, a global environment can be cultivated which allows programmatic to flourish across borders, opening up new opportunities for digital advertising stakeholders across the board.”

Premier sponsors of the study included Adobe, DataXu and Visual IQ, with Oracle Marketing Cloud, Quantcast and Selligent serving as supporting sponsors.

To download report CLICK HERE.