Programmatic tech set to steer digital advertising

Hailed by advertisers for its potential to streamline the process of ad buying, programmatic advertising is set to dominate the digital advertising sector.

Advertisers are increasingly using programmatic technology to improve the efficiency of their ad spend and tackle fraud. Many executives believe that instead of new players coming in, existing providers will gobble up smaller offerings and even team up with the competition.

A case in point is mobile advertising platform InMobi acquiring US-based AerServ for ₹573 crore ($90 million) in cash and stock to create the industry’s first mediation platform with a unified programmatic auction for mobile in-app publishers.

AerServ runs more than 90 billion ad opportunities each month and provides access to brand programmatic demand to over 2,000 mobile apps. The acquisition is meant to enhance monetisation for publishers globally. By creating a programmatic video platform for mobile publishers, the aim is to offer mobile video, at scale, including transparency and control.

While emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning have turned out to be key drivers of intelligent advertising throughout 2017, the machine-led technology is currently being used extensively across programmatic advertising to enable companies to collect smart data on consumers and ensure better ad targeting.

As smartphone and Internet penetration has led to a sharp increase in video ads, brands are eager to reach out to consumers through mobile and social platforms. A recent report by InMobi noted that the number of brand advertisers using video ads increased by 60 per cent in Q1 of 2017.

With nearly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data consumed every day via emails, videos, images, tweets and content, digital advertising is set to soar to newer heights this year.

Nitin Gupta, Founder, CEO, Xapads Media, a programmatic ad exchange, notes that the evolution of technology has led marketers to wake up to the promise of targeted ads, and that programmatic advertising is set to soon command a big share of the digital advertising pie.

Concurring with the view, Nitin Chowdhary, Director, Digital Infusion, a data and analytics marketing firm, said with automation already replacing aspects of human media management, programmatic advertising is turning out to be a perfect example.

“Previously, manual distribution, optimisation and reporting across a few publishers was an important skill. This can be done automatically now, via a programmatic platform through a single budget item across hundreds of publishers,” he said.

Globally, mobile publishers tend to seek greater control over advertising revenue and deeper transparency into both the buyer landscape and pricing. Publishers are also looking to further scale their advertising revenue.

Speaking about the acquisition, Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO, InMobi, said, “We are two profitable companies combining forces to cement our leadership position in mobile video advertising. Over the next three years, we expect to increase our brand programmatic revenue tenfold with this acquisition.”

The combined platforms are to also establish the first programmatic video exchange in India and China.

InMobi’s platform help brands, marketers and app publishers engage with mobile users and helps convert mobile moments into an opportunity to drive engagement and revenue.

It is expected that two thirds of the world’s digital display advertising will be traded programmatically by 2019 and advertising sold programmatically will increase from $57.5 billion to $84.9 billion over the next two years, growing at an average rate of 21 per cent a year.