Programmatic advertising. Everyone who visits our site has read about it, watched sessions on it, whether in person or through video, and interacted with thought leaders on it. Marketers fawn over it, advertisers nod their heads enthusiastically when it's mentioned, journalists know to bring it up every once in a while to sound au courant, and actual domain experts in programmatic advertising, usually, mostly, wince.

But does everyone get it, really? We asked those experts to share their thoughts.

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For Shashidhar Sharma- Head Programmatic Practice, GroupM Nexus, while there are many aspects that are not understood about programmatic, they can be summed up in one sentence. “Utilization of programmatic integration capabilities is very low and misunderstood.”

Sharma says people are unsure of programmatic delivery capabilities and focus on goals such as impressions and clicks, which are way beyond their shelf life at this point. Cost /time/session based KPIs should be opted for more often.

“Comparisons with Social and Search happen frequently while Programmatic has a different and definite place in the Digital ecosystem to go with other platforms/mediums. Unrealistic expectations from the platform in the initial stages where the USP of programmatic is kicking in (machine learning and algorithmic approach towards delivery improvement) ends up setting the medium up for failure,” he says.

Sharma adds that every integration adds value to the ROAs and ROI, but the initial costs are questioned without reviewing the value being added, like Integrations with BAV, Measurement, Ad Servers, Data partners etc. “The urgency and pressure to justify the tech costs impacts adoption. The key point to be noted here is that most of these tech costs actually improve the ROAs which would be visible as part of campaign delivery and over a period of time. Presently, most marketers tend to look at initial onboarding costs, and hence are put off by the additional tech costs.”

Tejinder Gill, General Manager, The Trade Desk, says that In India, programmatic is massively underrated for two reasons: “Firstly, there is a misconception that programmatic only gives you access to cheap, remnant inventory. While it may have been true in the early days of digital advertising, this isn’t the case anymore today. Programmatic has evolved so much over the last few years and today, it is one of the fastest moving and most innovative sectors of tech and of marketing.”

“Secondly, most people associate Programmatic as Programmatic Guarantee (PG), which is like direct buys where publishers control and guarantee the price and scale. However, the true form of programmatic operates in a transparent environment that supports democratic price discovery and decisioning,” he says.

Sharma says GroupM has seen many instances where they have spoken to clients and implemented a robust roadmap for better utilization of programmatic and delivered incredible performance, proven the redundancy of cost conversations around the medium (also known as tech fees) and helped many brands adopt a full funnel approach on programmatic – supporting the search and social strategy as well.

However, “General understanding of programmatic capabilities and USP is low, which leads to utilization of the medium only for reach and in short bursts, whereas it should be the other way round. Always on is the approach to go with (especially on mediums such as programmatic), as it helps build the algorithm over a period of time and helps deliver exceptional results. Of course, complimenting programmatic strategy with Search, Social and Ecommerce is also very important, thereby building the entire Digital strategy, rather than focussing on one medium each in a silo,” he says.

Suraj Nambiar, National Media Head at Tonic Worldwide, in fact says that in the Indian market, programmatic advertising is still not completely evolved, never mind several key aspects that are lacking or not fully understood. “One of the primary areas where there is a lack of understanding is in effective data management. While there is a vast amount of data available in India, there is a lack of tools and expertise to effectively manage and leverage this data for programmatic advertising.”

“Another critical aspect that is lacking in programmatic advertising in India is proper attribution modelling. There is often confusion about how to attribute credit for conversions and sales, which can lead to suboptimal campaign results. Additionally, there is a need for greater transparency in ad placements, as many advertisers are unsure of where their ads are being placed and whether they are reaching their intended audience,” he says.

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Sidharth Singh , Co-Founder at CupShup, highlights three aspects of programmatic advertising which clearly need more attention. These are Campaign Duration, Ad Fraud and Brand Equity.

“Firstly, the result of a programmatic media varies on the type of campaign that you are running. While few campaigns might give you results instantaneously, few might take excruciatingly long time to go through various kinds of testing, iterations and creative metamorphosis to produce results. Thus, understand the product and platform clearly before diving.”

“Secondly, ensure that your armour don’t have chinks. Fraud is now common irrespective of platform and programmatic isn’t an exception. You must test the waters, vet it through relevant tools and then scale up to keep bots at bay. Thus, ensure that you have a good fraud detection tool in your kitty when you experiment on a platform,” he says.

And finally, you get what you pay for and sometimes, it is much more than the money that you pay when your ad shows beside an inappropriate content. “No RoI can justify the damage the brand equity suffers when a terrible ad placement done through a low quality inventory shows up on your customer’s feed,” says Singh.

That leads us to Programmatic 2.0, of which Gill is an enthusiastic evangelist, an approach that brings together data, analytics, and other predictive parameters to make the optimal audience-based media buying decisions, so marketers can target their audience with the right message at the right time. “In short, Programmatic 2.0 empowers marketers to make data-driven decisions for every ad impression and every media dollar spent.”

“In India, the pandemic has fast-forwarded the adoption of Programmatic 2.0 as marketers realize the need to be more flexible and agile in a world where everything can change in a minute. As such, they turned to Programmatic 2.0 which offered them the flexibility to take full control and leverage every data point available to purchase each impression based on its value relative to their short and long-term business objectives. With Programmatic 2.0, marketers can launch and pause campaigns in real-time; scale spending?up or down at will; and swap creatives on the?fly,” elaborates Gill.

Sharma concludes, “Understanding of the medium is what’s lacking in the industry as a whole. This creates a chicken and egg situation where underbaked strategy undermines performance which in turn creates more doubts and misunderstanding. Filling this gap is important and that’s where the agency expertise can make a difference.”