Programmatic Data meets Creativity

BY Anjana Naskar

Today, programmatic advertising has emerged as a powerhouse, revolutionizing the way brands connect with their audiences. It involves the automated buying and selling of ad space in real-time, utilizing data and algorithms to target specific audiences with precision. As an integral component of modern marketing strategies, programmatic advertising has redefined the efficiency and scalability of campaigns, offering a data-driven approach to reach the right audience at the right time.

Yet, amidst the data-driven and algorithmic precisions, there exists a compelling yet underexplored dimension – creativity. Programmatic advertising has been regularly associated with algorithms and automated processes rather than with artistry and imagination that define creative endeavours. However, a shift is occurring, as industry pioneers recognise the untapped potential that lies in blending the analytical prowess of programmatic advertising with creative thinking. Let’s unravel the strategies employed by advertising agencies and programmatic solutions providers who have demonstrated that programmatic advertising can be as much about storytelling, emotion, and innovation as it is about data-driven targeting.

THE Role of Creativity in Programmatic Advertising
Creativity emerges as the secret ingredient that transforms programmatic campaigns from mere impressions to impactful engagements. As we navigate the nuances of this symbiotic relationship, we uncover how inventive thinking, compelling storytelling, and imaginative design breathe life into the structured framework of programmatic advertising.

“Creativity in advertising campaigns involves the strategic and innovative use of data, technology, and design to craft compelling and personalized ad experiences that resonate with the target audience. Programmatic ads enable brands to experiment with creative formats that can be delivered in sync with real-world moments to improve their relevance,” says Siddharth Dabhade, Managing Director and Commercial Board Member, MiQ while adding that the challenge for brands is to get deep insights about their audience to feed their ad campaigns - who are my most valuable consumers, which device/channel do I find them on, and how do I engage them with impactful creatives? “The biggest challenge is connecting and analysing all the data from diverse sources to form a complete picture of the customer. This is where MiQ comes in with its data analytics and data science expertise to help brands and media agencies.”

“Moment marketing is a highly engaging communication wherein brands can build contextual reinforcement via real time ads powered by programmatic - whether it is an IPL or a World Cup cricket match where brands dynamically adjust their communication to align with specific moments of interest such as a player hitting a century or a maximum or getting out. Other implementations we have delivered include a health drink brand wiring communication dynamically based on weather conditions in a city, and a solar panel brand delivering rightly timed ads when there is a power blackout in the neighborhood. This adaptability makes the communication more engaging and contextual to the ongoing event and helps deliver stronger brand recall,” explains” explains Satish Kadu, CEO, YOptima.

Merlin Coutinho, Head - Marketing and Brand Solutions, Lemma says creativity within programmatic advertising involves harnessing the platform’s dynamic capabilities to deliver contextually relevant ads. She explains that the power lies in presenting hyper-personalized advertisements seamlessly across various devices and channels. “For instance, imagine an ad promoting ice cream on a Digital out-of-home screen during scorching heat, while showcasing the temperature. This example goes to show the art of creating a highly relevant and visually appealing ad that captures the moment effectively, enhancing the overall impact and engagement.”

“There is an interesting quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein, ‘Creativity is intelligence having fun.’ Despite our efforts in optimization and automation, they often culminate in targeting and audience segmentation. Let’s venture into a world where data and insights, or intelligence, metamorphose into personalised creatives. Imagine segment-of-one ads dynamically generated in real-time, based on brands’ first-party data insights. This can be accomplished using Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCOs) or Creative Management Platforms (CMPs). The result – a plethora of creatives generated algorithmically across various ad sizes, achieving tremendous scale without manual intervention,” notes Gurleen Saraon, Director of Growth, Identity & Digital Media Solutions at Epsilon.

She further says that embracing this innovation in brand campaigns necessitates breaking down silos among different organizational functions. “In a landscape where advertising strategy and customer experience aren’t always aligned, typically due to campaign-first thinking, creatives tend to be isolated. Hence, the imperative is for Creative, Programmatic, Data, and Tech teams to collaborate proactively. The current uneasy coexistence between Creative, Tech, and Marketing stands as the most significant roadblock,” she adds.

“In programmatic advertising, creativity finds expression through the synergy of data, technology, and creative communication. The essence lies in leveraging each element individually or collaboratively, fostering an environment without substantial limitations,” explains Paras Mehta, Business Head - Programmatic Solutions, Interactive Avenues.

Furthermore, he shares how Programmatic offers different variables for experimentation. “Within the domains of Data, Technology, and Communications, a plethora of partners and vendors provide innovative solutions. These encompass Data Management Platforms (DMPs), Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), various MarTech solutions, diverse Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), and cutting-edge DSPs offering advanced retail audience targeting. Embracing AI/ML-based tools enables real-time auto-optimization, while numerous creative technology solutions add a layer of inventiveness. Programmatic becomes a playground for the Test-Learn-Scale model, offering myriad variables for experimentation. With such a diverse toolkit, campaigns can be strategically planned, skilfully managed, and creatively executed to achieve defined objectives.”

“Creativity in programmatic is going to be the new competitive advantage,” states Kumar Awanish, Chief Growth Officer, Cheil India. He believes it is all about building, delivering and optimizing the content on a real-time basis, the real-time data. “Consumers on the other end of the spectrum will be able to see more relevant, meaningful and personalized ads. There are automated tools available to advertisers which can not only churn thousands of creative on the go, but more importantly, they serve contextually rich ads.”

“We were one of the first brands in APAC to test it with the target frequency beta on DV360 for McDonald’s, (HRPL advertiser) where Madison teams planned for a CTV campaign across 4 markets to achieve high frequency in the already cluttered festive season to promote its McCheese products. We executed the Click to call, DCO, Lineups, Weather API campaigns. We were the first agency in India to take the Target frequency live in India on McD. Along with that, we have also executed Target Frequency for Frequency focused campaign,” shares Suchi Jain, General Manager, Madison Digital. “For our health care category brand that focused on targeting the audience with diabetes, we were not able to reach out to the right audience on YT directly due to policy restrictions on these advertising wall gardens. Hence, we used 3P audiences via programmatic to reach the right audiences. Along with this, we ran Programmatic Gauranteed (PG) deals with the medico publishers which helped us reach the audience with specific diabetes conditions,” she adds.

Challenging traditional advertising principles
The advent of programmatic strategies has initiated a profound paradigm shift, challenging long-standing principles that once governed traditional advertising. Redefining the very essence of campaign planning, execution, and audience engagement, Programmatic Advertising today challenges conventional advertising principles and strategies.

“Earlier, when you used to run Print ads, you had to contact different newspapers individually, and execute a campaign. Essentially, this involved a lot of logistics and was a bit of a slow process. In the evolution of advertising, traditional methods gave way to digital, but the process remained the same. Then programmatic advertising came into play and changed the game, and now you can manage it all within a single panel. It allows campaigns across multiple channels within a single system—display, video, OTTs, apps, Connected TV, and Digital Out-of-Home,” explains Dabhade. He highlights its main advantages – streamlined campaign execution, improved financial efficiency by discovering optimal pricing in the demand-supply dynamic, and all of this managed within a singular panel.

“Compared to traditional advertising, it delivers better audience engagement, improved campaign performance, and higher ROI, making it a must-have tool in today’s digital marketing landscape. Programmatic advertising offers efficient targeting options, helping advertisers minimize digital ad spend wastage,” shares Coutinho.
“Programmatic advertising helps manage ads across multiple ad networks and direct deals. They can optimize revenue and traffic with more control over deals. Publishers can scale and monetize their storytelling across every customer interaction from connected TVs to mobile apps and everything in between,” states Jain.

Explaining further how to leverage programmatic advertising, she shares, “In the publisher ecosystem, the publisher ideally would want to sell inventory directly as that helps them maximize revenues. The next best possible way is to use Programmatic Direct, preferred deals where they fix the price to get maximum revenue. This can be further taken to private/open auctions where they can open the inventory in an open auction, setting the floor price. This coupled with ad innovations, adding 3rd party trackers seamlessly, reporting, data and insights helps amplify this further.”

Programmatic ad revenue in India is expected to reach INR 394bn. by 2024, according to an e4m-GroupM report released in December 2023. The report further states that a progressive shift towards programmatic advertising is likely in India in the coming years, reaching an estimated market share of 44% by 2024.

Why is it important for Advertisers & Publishers?
Programmatic advertising offers a dynamic platform that seamlessly connects advertisers with their target audience while providing publishers with a sophisticated avenue for maximizing revenue. Let’s find out what makes it an indispensable tool for both advertisers and publishers, shaping modern marketing strategies.

“Programmatic advertising epitomizes precision targeting, leveraging real-time optimizations and sharper audience segments through AI tools. This approach empowers advertisers to achieve business objectives with an ROI-driven media strategy. The advantages encompass refined audience targeting, streamlined automated buying, data-driven insights, and real-time adaptability, making programmatic advertising a cost-effective and results-driven alternative to traditional methods,” highlights Dimpy Yadav, General Manager, Xaxis India, while adding that publishers are increasingly embracing programmatic across various channels, including video, display, audio, gaming, and DOOH.

“This adoption ensures efficient monetization, reducing ad-call wastage and providing real-time visibility for advertisers. As publishers seek diversified revenue streams, the programmatic ecosystem enhances their potential with streamlined operations, competitive pricing, insights-driven campaign deliveries, and automated reporting. This evolution creates an efficient delivery ecosystem for publishers and optimizes advertisers’ media spends,” she shares.

Kadu explains that Programmatic advertising is primarily about combining media, data and tech to deliver automated media buying, including openly auctioned digital media inventory as well as via programmatic deals with publishers. He says, “Shifting from manual to automated media buying yields four core benefits. Firstly, it enables powerful media consolidation, providing maximum reach and unified frequency control across YouTube, OTTs, Video, Display and Audio inventory. This leads to substantial savings, up to 30-40% of the budget, through frequency histogram optimization. Secondly, programmatic allows for layering audience targeting across all formats and publishers ensuring effective targeting. Thirdly, it facilitates more efficient pricing through open auction-based bidding. Last but not least, programmatic delivers unified, standardized, and transparent reporting, mitigating the risk of self-reporting practices and ensuring accurate campaign measurement. In essence, programmatic advertising offers a comprehensive solution for marketers, providing unified reach, optimized pricing, precise targeting, and transparent reporting,”

Awanish emphasizes the substantial advantages brought about by programmatic advertising for both publishers and advertisers. He shares. “In essence, programmatic advertising, or the Ad exchange facilitating ad inventory transactions, serves as another Amazon for publishers and advertisers. Its significance lies in the ease of automated buying, utilizing multiple data attributes for precise audience targeting, expanding reach through controlled exposure, ensuring ad placement transparency, and supporting various creative formats. This automated approach proves more imperative than direct buying, offering benefits such as simplified operations, no need for a dedicated sales team, and the header bidding approach for optimized ROI. Publishers find it to be a transformative phenomenon, streamlining inventory management without the need for extensive infrastructure. The header bidding approach allows them to cater to multiple demands, maximizing ROI, and provides valuable data and insights for campaign and placement optimization.”

Other Significant Trends in Programmatic Advertising
As we delve deeper into the world of Programmatic Advertising, several significant trends redefine the industry’s dynamics. The transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence is at the forefront, where machine learning algorithms, predictive analytics, and automation revolutionize campaign precision and effectiveness. Amidst this evolution, concerns about data privacy have become paramount, prompting programmatic players to carefully balance personalization with stringent privacy measures. Additionally, the measurement system is a critical focus, with a spotlight on the methods and tools utilized to gauge success and accurately attribute results in programmatic advertising.

Dabhade states that MiQ believes personalisation can be achieved without using third-party cookies and PII data by connecting data from geo-contextual signals. This helps brands create and target audience cohorts that can be served as personalized ads using dynamic creatives synced with real-world events using data-driven programmatic strategies. He says, “We are a GDPR-compliant company, and we don’t collect any personally identifiable information (PII) or data to execute campaigns.”

Speaking about the measurement system in programmatic, he further elaborates, “Programmatic brings measurability to campaigns with data connections and integration across data sources and channels. Marketers and advertisers measure the metrics of their campaigns against different goals depending on the type of campaign. For example, a programmatic video campaign on YouTube, CTV or OTT aimed to build awareness and recall can be measured by metrics such as Video Completion Rate (VCR), View Through Rate (VTR), and Click Through Rate (CTR) and subsequently, brand lift can be measured by a brand lift study for the audience exposed to the ads. Similarly, for a performance marketing campaign, metrics such as CTRs, Cost per Lead (CPL), Customer Acqusition Costs (CAC), increase in app installs, reduction in cost per install and other brand KPIs become relevant.”

“The solution comprises a strategic component and a technological aspect. The strategic element focuses on the value proposition—why should a consumer opt-in if there’s no value received from engaging with your channels, not just programmatic but across the board? What is your 1st Party Data strategy as an advertiser? The tooling then extends this with Consent Management Platforms (CMPs), 1st Party Cookie solutions, Universal IDs, Data Clean Rooms, etc. Achieving a balance in personalization in the new privacy-first world is impossible without the correct strategy and tools in place in your AdTech stack,” emphasizes Saraon.

The integration of Programmatic Advertising with Connected TV (CTV) emerges as a pivotal trend, offering new dimensions to campaign strategies. Crafting effective approaches for cross-device and cross-channel programmatic advertising campaigns further underscores the industry’s commitment to staying at the forefront of innovation and relevance.

“Programmatic advertising not only streamlines media trading processes but also broadens targeting options, a landscape that was initially dominated by digital channels and has now seamlessly integrated with Connected TV (CTV),” says Nikhil Kumar, Chief Growth Officer, mediasmart. “With the rise of Connected TV (CTV), particularly in India, where 84% of households engage with CTV through OTT apps, brands find a unique opportunity. CTV’s app-centric ecosystem, rooted in programmatic advertising, establishes a premium platform for targeted ads, capturing an engaged audience in an unrestricted scheduling environment. The accessibility of Smart TVs, combined with diverse content preferences, empowers brands to customize campaigns based on regional genres, demographics, and social classes. This precision targeting renders CTV an effective medium for both luxury and mass consumer brands, marking a significant evolution in tailored and impactful advertising strategies,” he adds further.

Speaking about cross-device and cross-channel programmatic campaigns and how AI tools can be leveraged, Yadav explains, “With strategic planning, data integration, and a comprehensive approach, we craft cohesive cross-device and cross-channel programmatic advertising campaigns. This involves creating unified audience cohorts by integrating data from various devices and channels, ensuring a consistent understanding of user behaviour and preferences throughout the campaign. Utilizing advanced cross-device tracking technologies enables a seamless understanding of user journeys across smartphones, tablets, desktops, and connected devices, facilitating targeted messaging across platforms. Leveraging AI tools and real-time optimization algorithms adjust bidding, targeting, and creative elements based on user behaviour and campaign performance, enhancing efficiency across omnichannel strategies. Implementing these strategies allows advertisers to create unified, engaging, and effective programmatic campaigns that seamlessly connect with users throughout their journey across devices and channels.

Way forward
From the integration of emerging technologies like Blockchain and Augmented Reality to the continued evolution of data privacy regulations, it’ll be interesting to see the road ahead for advertisers, agencies, and publishers alike.

Gavin Buxton, Managing Director – Asia, Magnite emphasizes how programmatic advertising transforms engagement dynamics, fostering a more personalised and impactful advertising landscape. He shares, “Programmatic adoption in India is anticipated to grow at a 32% CAGR until 2027, as per Magna Global. The dynamic nature of programmatic enables real-time campaign adjustments, leading to more meaningful user experiences. Programmatic advertising, blending data, automation, personalization, and efficient targeting, redefines consumer engagement and delivers relevant content across diverse channels. In streaming environments, personalization is crucial, driving a 76% attention rate for personalized ads among streamers. This engagement translates into actionable responses, with 93% of streamers reacting to ads and 33% making purchases. Advertisers must leverage multiple touchpoints across channels and devices to engage audiences effectively.”

Staying hopeful for India, Kadu explains that Programmatic has grown into a default choice for marketers to run full funnel brand campaigns optimally. “It has evolved into a primary vehicle for distributing brand communication to target audiences while delivering audience discovery, measurement and optimization of brand and growth metrics. In advanced markets like that in the US, programmatic accounts for over 95 percent of all media buying, and a similar trend is anticipated in India. India has crossed a tipping point and we see brand marketers wholeheartedly embracing programmatic as the primary method for media buying across the marketing funnel.”

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