Programmatic And Native Say ‘I Do’

Dynamic Creative Optimisation proves programmatic technology is more than automation of buying and selling ads. The union of DCO, mobile, and programmatic native promises “happily ever after” for ad output.

UK satirical magazine Private Eye takes great pleasure in its fortnightly “Malgorithms” section, which highlights juxtapositions in newspapers of ads next to articles that are–to say the least–entirely inappropriate.

This may bring about a few giggles for Private Eye readers but certainly not for digital advertisers, whose revenue and reputation rest upon the quality of their ad placements. This highlights a key obstacle in digital advertisers getting the best and most relevant ad placed in the right location to maximise positive brand exposure.

As we’re all aware, poor digital ad placement not only results in less ad revenue, but also causes more annoyance for consumers. According to an IAB survey into ad blocking, ads being interruptive (73%), annoying (55%), or irrelevant (46%) were among key reasons why people can be driven towards using ad blockers.

There is, however, no doubt that digital advertisers are always seeking new ways to improve the accuracy and relevance of ad placements. Programmatic buying technology, for a start, has gone a long way towards resolving the issue, bringing the benefits of scale for marketers and helping to make ads far more relevant to the individual.

The Next Step

But while the impact of programmatic technology has indeed been transformative, the really exciting developments are still to come. The next big step will see programmatic technology integrated with that other key growth area of advertising–native.

Up until recently, many marketers have questioned the validity of bringing the two together. If native is all about blending in with the environment, isn’t this the exclusive preserve of the individually created and placed ad?

Thankfully though, this is beginning to change as pioneers in the field have steadily dismantled the technological hurdles. Last month Google became the latest digital ad leader to join the charge, announcing that advertisers would be able to buy native ads programmatically via DoubleClick Bid Manager for the first time.

Through the development at AdMaxim of our own native programmatic platform, we’ve also been exploring what we believe to be one of the most exciting opportunities associated with the trend-Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO).

Dynamic Creative Optimisation

DCO is proof that programmatic technology is about more than just the automation of buying and selling advertising and is becoming crucial for the creative as well. The process behind DCO involves integrating data on, for example, users’ content consumption, audience segment, location, and other contextual factors in order to either create or update an ad in real time.

This means the native ad a consumer sees will change seamlessly in real time based on information gleaned from multiple sources. Contextual data could be received about the temperature through location (a hot day in London), the page a user is viewing (a news story on the current heatwave), and the time of day (1pm, when it’s hottest). This insight could then result in an advert being served for an ice-cream brand-leading to a much more relevant experience for the user.

DCO performance data can then be fed back into the ad platform in order to optimise the campaign at a granular level, for example based on specific combinations of imagery and copy in the ad, allowing even greater efficiency and relevance in campaigns.

Mobile, in particular, is proving to be a powerful catalyst in the drawing together of programmatic and native. With online searches on mobile surpassing desktop for the first time and the number of smartphones in the world set to hit 2 billion this year, mobile is already the dominant form of communication. As mobile penetration has increased, the amount of contextual data available to marketers has grown exponentially.

The powerful blend of dynamic creative optimisation, mobile, and programmatic native is emerging to allow us to shape ad output to its optimal level–for advertisers and consumers alike.

All this will be bad news for Private Eye’s “Malgorithms” column, but fantastic news for those who seek to build a healthy and sustainable future for media and marketing.