The digital era has made a significant impact across all industries and domains and advertising is one of them. Owing to easy internet access and low data cost, personalisation of content has taken the front seat. This is where programmatic advertising has played and will play a crucial role. In fact as per a report by market research firm Statista, programmatic ad spend is expected to go over $150 billion globally by the end of 2021 after it has reached heights of around $129 billion during 2020.
Although, a combination of evolving technology enhancement and capabilities are expected to make programmatic advertising more exciting; however, now in a cookie-less world, it will be interesting to look into programmatic advertising trends.
Cookie-less era
With the depreciation date for third-party cookies finally knocking the door, it’s time for marketers to look for alternatives and partners, so that the transition could be as smooth as possible. Although according to reports, Google will still allow the first-party data, so the focus in terms of programmatic advertising trends would be regulated first-party data. This could provide advertisers with precise details about their audiences starting from preferences to browsing behaviour. Interestingly data shoes that 51% of marketing professional have started to invest more on contextual targeting while 43% feels optimistic about this method in future.
Connected TV (CTV)
Pandemic has pushed the use of online streaming and television which led to the rise of CTV or Connected TV. With about 40% of waking hours spent in front of screens, people spending double the amount of their time per day on streaming services as compared to pre pandemic numbers, CTV is considered among the leading programmatic advertising trends. The year 2021 witnessed CTV advertising in a big way due to the growth of this medium and experts suggest focus will remain the same in 2022 as well. While this development has happened over a short period, the opportunity for programmatic advertising to grow is wide. All required is to find a right partner to assess the cost, each and measurement for this space.
Mobile gaming as programmatic display
Along with CTV, mobile gaming platforms were also on the rise during the pandemic. This has led to rise in competition in mobile gaming advertising which implies campaigns need to be more creative to reach the right audience at the right time and place. If advertisers are able to optimise the power of this medium, then programmatic advertising can be scaled and targeted to the apt audience, resulting in an impressive ROI.
Use of programmatic capabilities
With creativity taking the centre stage to reach the right audience, support of programmatic capabilities will be of utmost importance. The four main strategies include personalisation which refers to targeting the audience on a wider scale using data feeds and dynamic creativity can result in higher conversion rates. The second is an ad display with use of video as it gives better CTR. The third strategy is creating impressive mobile first advertisements which could outsmart competition. Test and optimise will be key in a cookie less world so one needs to test their ads and optimise accordingly.
Overall programmatic advertising is going through a transformative phase, and it will be interesting to see how marketers will take action to adapt this change. As first-party data will be essential to assess behaviour of the audience, creativity and using programmatic capabilities will be key to tap the audiences.