People love to drop hot takes in adtech so I promise the title of this post might lean into clickbait, but I’m not predicting the end of programmatic or even the open web. I am, however, predicting how open web media is accessed will be dramatically different very soon. Many have suggested that we are in the “outcomes” era of programmatic media buying, but I think it’s more specific. Welcome to the “efficient outcomes” era!
Here are a few thoughts on the direction of programmatic and how it will make the ecosystem better for buyers.
Nobody Will Buy On Open Exchange
While many in the industry have been predicting the demise of SSPs for years, the rise of curation is providing a rebirth for the supply side. Now buyers are able to take data activation and traffic filtering closer to the impression source creating a lot of efficiencies. The implications are vast from decarbonizing our industry to improved signals in targeting. Agencies and brands will continue to rapidly adopt curation and bring in-house (either directly or via a managed service that specializes in curation).
PMP, PG, or Direct Is The Way Forward
While the supply side is having its moment, this doesn’t mean the demand side should feel threatened. In fact, the demand side has a tremendous opportunity (and duty in my opinion) to continue scaling direct deals with premium publishers. The Trade Desk has taken the lead on this and allowing buyers to have insight and access to premium inventory at scale will be a preferred way for many advertisers to buy. Finding a way to extend this opportunity to the SMB buyer is a critical piece to figure out, but many companies are entering this space.
Where the demand side and supply side might squabble is over programmatic guaranteed deals. I will be interested to see if guaranteed deals continue to grow in popularity or if they eventually get folded into the more general PMP offering from curators or if the demand side gobbles it up into a more efficient direct deal system.
Integrating The Ecosystem
While M&A has been a hot topic of late it is just a subset of a wider happening within the adtech industry; the quest to integrate the ecosystem at scale. Programmatic has historically been a very fragmented and clunky integrations have exacerbated inefficiencies across the ecosystem. Whether it is new product releases or M&A if you look closely the trend is horizontal integration across the ecosystem, not vertical.
Platforms that can offer efficiency by being able to service advertisers, DSPs, SSPs/Exchanges, and Publishers will have the power to identify and activate quality media at scale. This is even more crucial as we continue to see a desire from buyers and agencies to reduce the overall number of platforms they work with. The more you can offer, the better.
In conclusion, the “efficient outcomes” era of programmatic will bring more transparency, across fewer platform partners that are better integrated horizontally across the ecosystem. The result will be more efficiency and better outcomes for buyers and higher rewards (i.e. higher eCPMs for quality publishers). Stay tuned, the best of programmatic is yet to come!