Owing to innovations in technology, fluctuating consumer behaviour, economic pressures, rules governing privacy, and an appetite for more buyer control over media budgets, the digital advertising supply network is becoming bigger and more complex. PubMatic held a round table in association with e4m, where experts hailing from the digital advertising and marketing industry discussed the significance of programmatic advertising and various aspects of it.Programmatic advertising has grown into an important aspect of digital media investment, offering advertisers the opportunity to reach large demographics and track their campaigns using real-time analytics. We must collaborate with the right programmatic partners to address novel challenges and generate fresh value in the supply chain, surpassing mere efficiency.

The discussion on the topic included industry experts who circle digital advertising. The interlocutors were - Shradha Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO, Grapes Digital; Siddharth Dabhade, MD, MIQ Digital; Satish Kadu, Founder & CEO, YOptima; Maneesh Vasudeo, SVP - Media Operations (Performance + Programmatic + Brand Marketing + Media Partners), LS Digital; Ashok Shinde, Vice President - Media, Pivotroots; Ruhbir Singh, Global CEO, Tatvic; Aunkita Dey, Strategy Lead - Data & Digital Media, Media Monk; Rahul Joshi, VP Sales, Silverpush. The session was moderated by Sudipto Das, VP, Advertiser Solutions, APAC, PubMatic and Amit Kr. Yadav, Country Manager, South Asia at PubMatic while Chad Tempo, Senior Director, Advertiser Solutions at PubMatic gave a presentation on their newest offering, Activate, a comprehensive SPO solution that brings the power of direct deals together with the automation and real-time optimization of programmatic.

The discussion revolved around programmatic advertising’s impact on modern-day marketing solutions. CTV and OTT platforms have grown phenomenally and programmatic surely has entered in conversations on tables where the decision-makers are allocating budget about the same. Das started the discussion with the opportunities they come across in this respect to the landscape.

Agarwal of Grapes spoke about the trends of programmatic advertising trends and how it has impacted their operations. She said that she has been using programmatic advertising for eight years now. “The best part about it is that you can do an omnichannel strategy on your digital platforms”. Earlier, which was difficult with TV where marketers had unified viewership not knowing if they were reaching the right audience, today it's possible because of this practice of advertising.

With such technology being enabled, there is also a threat of ad fraud. Joshi pointed out how people are trying to learn every day. “One of the changes that I'm seeing from that time to now is brands or agencies have their own in-house programmatic capabilities. There is a thirst to understand how it works and there is also this angle of curbing ad fraud as well as brand safety. These are some of the changes I see in space.”

Since programmatic advertising is still fairly new, people are still in the phase of trial and error. And with this, many of them have also experienced missells so education has become a necessity to figure out what works for them and if they are being conned or missing anything. During the session, PubMatic also suggested how their platform helps on building a pure strategy to reach better consumers with the help of programmatic advertising.

Das of PubMatic mentioned how “Measurability is a boon as well as a bane”. Dabhade spoke about the evolution and asked a prominent question, he said, “Since the market is evolving between 2010 and 2020 digital was Google, Meta as well as performance, while it is still there, a lot of brands are also thinking about branding. They are still looking out for measurements but there is an acceptance that if they only performance marketing then it's not going to work for them which is a big change. We are a Google company, so we have been working on a clean data route, and cookieless strategy for some time, that process is also evolving very quickly. Now TV is also going digital, so a lot of brands are saying that they need to have a budget allocated to CTV next year, as it is going to get bigger and bigger. What is happening to the affiliate business, and it is related to programmatic?”

Das further asked the speakers as agencies whether they are buying audiences or inventories? Kadu said, “Over the last three years, accelerated by COVID, we see that digital branding is clearly mainstream and programmatic is getting adapted as a de facto mechanism for driving digital branding. We see that the conversations have moved on from performance-oriented results and have matured to a full-funnel paradigm. More advertisers or buyers are talking about CTV, OTT or DOOH. Particularly CTV as it is tapping into 40 million households. Today, we see that OTT is accepted as a data inventory as it is available to be bought.”

“There is a greater percentage of advertisers who are looking for customized audiences by that not just first-party data but also third-party data players becoming audience providers. Around 30% of advertisers are ready to pay extra for this service. But there are questions around measurability, they want to understand how it's moving the brand matrix, the search lifts or is it translating commercially. There is still more room for improvement.”As digital is becoming a strong medium, marketers have started to have a digitally heavy plan. Dabhade asked a question on the significance of direct and programmatic sale prices? To which Das responded and said, “There is a big significance because, a lot of times publishers would price programmatic a few cents higher simply because they had to factor in the tech cost, overheads are there everywhere. The promise of programmatic is that we bring a lot of efficiency at scale.”Concluding the panel, e4m asked speakers whether they thought CTV would be an important part of their media plans of brands. The speakers collectively agreed that they are already seeing the demand increasing and they see contextual advertising increasing as well.