Last month, more than 40 marketers across 26 different brands came together for the WFA Workshop on Programmatic Proficiency in Singapore. The session looked at how brands can not only increase and refine their levels of programmatic maturity but also understand the evolution of programmatic solutions for their marketing needs.
Muhammad Abdullah, Regional Head of Digital (SEA) at Ebiquity recaps the discussion which debunked the notion that direct relationships with digital partners automatically delivers the disclosure that brands desire, and shares Ebiquity’s 8-point checklist that brands can use to determine if their programmatic practices are truly transparent.
Muhammad points out that while establishing direct relationships with tech vendors and/or key digital publishers & platforms plays an essential part in pushing the boundaries to maximise value from programmatic, it is not the be all, end all solution. Actually this is only one of the many actions that can be taken towards maximising your digital media investment, especially for programmatic.
Even though brands with direct vendor/publisher relationships have the ability to maximise programmatic activity and transparency, those same brands often have many areas where they can push the boundaries on programmatic performance even further, some of which are, but not limited to:
• Understanding ROI and building attribution accuracy
• More rigorous campaign-level analysis & learnings
• Ownership of audience & campaign-related data
• Greater safeguards around brand safety
• Putting governance & compliance programmes in place
• Further implementation of optimisation solutions
These areas of media fundamentals are often overlooked by media practitioners and brand advertisers alike when assessing their current model and level of programmatic disclosure.
One of the many overlooked media fundamental best practices involves campaign performance visibility, which is essential for advertisers to: (i) know what has been bought and (ii) analyse how performance differs among vendor/site/channel/placement mix. Ultimately, advertisers who are not able to gain full campaign visibility face challenges in obtaining accurate campaign learning and deploying the learning across campaigns or products within the brand’s portfolio.
Brands already opted into a non-disclosed model would only be able to derive learning from a level of data that falls within an agreed scope/opt-in clause. This level of data usually only comprises of a small subset from the whole programmatic activity, rather than the full set of actual data that is already readily available. In fact, this data can be independently obtained from source at any granular depth or breadth required.
Another fundamental best practice that gets overlooked is the reported splits between actual “working media” and “non-working media” spends. When these splits are not disclosed, the reported ROI found in marketing effectiveness studies and market mix modelling reports can misrepresent the contribution from certain sources, vendors or channels.
Knowing the right questions to ask to achieve programmatic transparency can prevent significant inefficiencies and quality pitfalls in your spend. At Ebiquity we’ve developed an 8-point checklist for programmatic transparency.
To view the 8-point checklist for programmatic transparency, click here.
