Interactive Advertising Bureau chief executive Vijay Solanki has urged caution in interpreting headline figures that suggest programmatic doesn't deliver ROI or is ineffective.
Solanki believes more work and education needs to be done to assess where investment into programmatic goes and how this may benefit advertisers.
He says the IAB will launch its own research into the often misunderstood form of automated trading where audiences are bought across a wide range of websites, usually at a lower cost.
“Yes, this is interesting, but what's our situation here in Australia?” Solanki said about revelations made about programmatic at AANA event last Tuesday.
“Transparency is very important but to become transparent you need to get a common understanding, which requires a bit of education and a common language.
“There was a slide that Nick Manning put up that showed the $1 down to 30 to 40 cents. The reality is that those technologies that are referenced in the middle have a role to play.
“If they are used properly, they help improve things like targeting so the right audience is getting the right ad. If you put a slide like that up you've got to be careful to make sure that everyone understands the role of those different technologies.”
The slide Solanki is referring to that was presented by the Ebiquity chief strategy officer suggests only 20% of ad spend on programmatic reaches the consumer.
Solanki believes that the onus is on the marketer to make sure they they understand it and also how much ROI different media channels deliver.
He says he was surprised when Manning suggested that programmatic doesn't deliver on ROI.
“We've seen plenty of examples at our recent Programmatic Summit that showed positive ROI,” he says.
“But the message here, and I agree with it, is that it's incumbent on the marketer and the media agency to be sure of that.”
He says this will vary between different companies and categories and that a one-sized-fits-all representation is not realistic.
“The other thing is test and learn. One of the great things about digital is you are getting constant data feedback,” he adds.
"Programmatic trading and real-time bidding is an inevitable shift in the way media buying is carried out and will only continue to gather pace in the future.
“That model needs to be made more open,” he adds. “We absolutely support the transparency piece around that but it's incumbent upon the four corners of the industry working together – the agencies, advertisers, publishers and tech companies.
“With a lot of these things there is a learning curve. A lot of organisations are getting better at programmatic and where they may have put extra people at the beginning for checks and balances, it's improving.”
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