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Bonus Episode 3

Trends in Programmatic Advertising

Illustration of Pierce McManus, Sales Enablement Specialist at StackAdapt

About This Episode

July 13, 2022

Learn today’s top three programmatic trends, and why advertisers should be paying attention to them.

Pierce McManus | Sales Enablement Specialist, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

I think the most interesting one right now is probably what’s going on with Google and antitrust issues. This has a downward effect within the industry. So right now, they’re being scrutinized, and there is a bipartisan proposal coming out that might make them actually divest or change up their business model.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:20)

But then you think about the social landscape. The research is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to lead to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results and audience targeting and really is what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.

Matt (00:00:44)

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, I’m the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt and welcome to this bonus episode of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Today, the topic of choice is trends in programmatic advertising. In this episode, I have Pierce McManus from StackAdapt to share his expertise. As always, this bonus episode will be made up of short rapid-fire questions. But to kick things off, I’ll pass things over to Pierce to tell us a little bit about himself and his experience in the industry. So, over to you, Pierce.

Pierce (00:01:17)

Hey everybody. Yeah, so as Matt mentioned, my name is Pierce McManus, so I’ve been at Stack Adapt here for a little bit over a year. I’ve been in programmatic advertising to getting close to half a decade. I used to be an account executive
here, working with agency partners and brand directly, but now I’ve kind of pivoted into more of an enablement role so helping our internal people keep an eye on trends. So it seemed like a good fit for this podcast. Long time listener, first time contributor, very excited for this one.

Matt (00:01:44)

Thanks so much Pierce. So let’s get started with our question number one. Pierce, we wanted to know what are the top three trends that advertisers need to be paying attention to in 2022 and beyond?

Pierce (00:01:58)

So, I think the biggest thing that’s kind of changing the industry right now is looking at all the different advertising channels and data sources that are coming out. One indicator of this is the in-game advertising trends. So Sony and Xbox have come out saying that they’re going to be building in game advertising for a lot of their publishers. The marketing behind it is saying it’s going to support the publishers themselves, but we’ll see how that actually shakes out when they actually start doing their advertising and what percentage they’ll be taking themselves. Another thing that’s of interest is people trying to monetize their data. So Marriott just came out saying that they are going to be building their own ad exchange with Yahoo as their partner. And I expect this trend to continue as people have their 1st-party data and a strong source of 1st-party data with the way that the industry is going and Identifiers online kind of disappearing, I think more and more brands and companies will be trying to do this. We have seen this reflected across other brands and businesses like Lowe’s and Home Depot that are trying to monetize same with Best Buy. So that’s definitely one thing that I’m keeping track of. Another aspect is definitely attribution right. With the cookie going away, people need to be kind of thinking about future proofing their attribution in their campaigns. Realistically, the standard attribution bottles really aren’t going to be working in the foreseeable future. So there are a lot of different attribution sources out there. I think the one that’s going to probably take most precedent is going to be media mixed modeling. Unfortunately, this requires a lot of data, so we’ll see how many brands are able to adopt this. But we’ll definitely need to be keeping an eye out for different attribution of models and trends as things kind of progress and the cookie starts to finally fade away. The last thing that I’m keeping track of, and it’s not the most fun conversation to have, is inflation and where the market is currently going. So when you’re trying to advertise to consumers, if the dollar isn’t going as far as they’re used to, consumers are probably going to start pinching pennies and probably won’t be purchasing products that they’re being advertised to at the same rate we’ve been seeing during the pandemic when people had stacks of cash because they were saving or weren’t traveling or weren’t commuting. So I think marketers are going to be really need to be creative when it comes to reaching their audiences and driving home the message as to why they should be purchasing from them or why they should be considering their brand. An additional aspect of this is actually speaking to our partners. So with the economic climate being uncertain at this point in time, a lot of companies are being more hesitant in the way if they spend money. Historically and unfortunately, typically marketing and advertising is the first thing to get cut when companies are cutting back and that’s going to be our job as a partner to educate them on the detriment of doing that. There’s a variety of studies out there that say the brands that continue to advertise during down periods and the economy actually see the longest growth or the largest growth when we come out of that quote-unquote recession, which arguably I don’t think we’re there yet. But that’s always something we have to discuss with our agency partners. With our brands directly. Just making sure they understand if they do cut. There’s a detriment to that and realistically. They should still be investing even when it’s not the same economic climate we’ve been used to for the last few years.

Matt (00:05:21)

Definitely. And you hit on something there that we talked a lot about in earlier episodes of the How Agency Stripe podcast where we said that during the pandemic, there were a lot of sensitivities for consumers. And it almost seems like we’re on that other side of the coin where instead of just leaning into the fact that people are stuck at home and budgets are limited or people have a surplus of cash. Now. It’s like. Okay. We have to cater to consumers who maybe don’t have that much money because life has picked back up again and things are getting expensive again and there is inflation. So I wanted to ask you, Pierce, moving on to our second question here. It could be one thing, it could be multiple things, but what’s changing the face of programmatic advertising right now, kind of going beyond these trends?

Pierce (00:06:14)

I think the most interesting one right now is probably what’s going on with Google and antitrust issues. This has a downward effect within the industry. So right now they’re being scrutinized and there is a bipartisan bill that is coming out that might make them actually divest or change up their business model. So I’m really interested in seeing what that effect is going to have on the advertising industry. If the government says that Google needs to break up, do they shoot the cookie faster or does it benefit for them to hold out a little bit longer and maybe push that 2023 timeline down the road a little bit further? Another thing that I’m looking at as well is kind of what Apple is doing to try and destabilize the advertising ecosystem. They are going very privacy first and trying to talk about how they’re beneficial to customers by not monetizing their data, which is a little bit of smoke and mirrors tactic because realistically Apple is just anonymizing things and then creating their own advertising business behind the scenes. But they have done that and done it so well that it’s destabilized Facebook quite significantly. And that’s something else that I’m following is we’ve seen a lot of advertising dollars come from Facebook to programmatic advertising, which is beneficial for us as a whole. And the reason behind that is just Facebook’s performance isn’t what it used to be. And realistically, I don’t see Facebook being able to solve this issue. If we look at the history of Facebook’s business model, typically, what they do is acquire businesses versus building stuff internally. And given the way the governments are looking at these big advertising companies, Facebook will probably not have the ability to purchase any companies because of the antitrust issues. So realistically, they’re going to have to develop stuff again for the first time in a long time versus going out and going with that M and a business model where they just buy the biggest competitor added to the platform and monetize that data. So, those are a few things that I’m looking at, but those will all have major effects on the advertising industry and changing programmatic going forward.

Matt (00:08:13)

For sure. And this brings us to our next question, Pierce. One of the first things you led with is that your role at StackAdapt and in sales enablement and how you sort of navigated the industry over the last five or so years is just staying on top of trends and understanding what’s going on and the impact that this is going to have for our listeners. What tips or resources, what would you recommend they check out or where would you recommend that they go to also stay on top of these trends and things that are changing in the industry?

Pierce (00:08:52)

Yeah, I mean, there’s so many resources out there. Realistically. I am a huge fan of the digital newsletter because Shiv, who’s on the previous podcast has these great opinion pieces in addition to all the news articles that are coming out. In addition to that, I don’t really do anything too complex. I just make sure I look for advertising news every single day, every single week, and that can come from a variety of sources. I’m a big fan of using Google’s News. I also use Google Updates for specific competitors that I’m looking to keep track of or people that are making moves within the industry. So that’s definitely one. Another thing that I like to do is I still, even though I’m not technically facing brands, I follow advertising a lot, so I will go and watch ad supported content. So I’ll go to like a YouTube, for example, watch one of our streaming providers and just see what kind of ads are out there and see if there’s any noticeable trends in terms of how people are trying to reach their audiences, the creatives that are in market. Something that I think was discussed in a previous podcast is the importance of creative. And I really think that’s something as well that we kind of need to be focusing on going forward as Attribution goes away. We have to be focusing on the messaging we’re using to reach our customers and how imperative that is for a brand to create that relationship.

Matt (00:10:05)

Awesome. So just closing things out here. Pierce, a final question we had think five years from now, what does the state of programmatic advertising look like in your opinion?

Pierce (00:10:20)

Flying cars in the clouds, skyscrapers, utopia? No, for programmatic advertising, I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to see more and more of these channels flesh out from different providers that are trying to monetize their data. Now, this can come from examples like Marriott that we already discussed, but I also see this happening as more and more devices get connected to the internet, internet of things. There’s a great book called Quantum Marketing that talks about how people are starting to be advertised with everything that connects to the Internet. So smart home devices, Alexis essentially going to be able to reach somebody no matter where they are in their day to day in a very unique format. So that’s definitely something I think will happen here within the next five years. The challenge that comes with that, though, is attribution once again, right? So if I’m advertising to somebody across multiple channels, how do I get a cohesive view of the people that I’m reaching? And that will be a challenge that, realistically. I don’t think anyone has quite honestly solved yet, but that’s what I really think programmatic advertising is going, is we will reach people no matter where they are, no matter what device they are, and then hopefully a meaningful impactful way that drives those relationships with brands.

Matt (00:11:34)

Fantastic. Well, Pierce, thank you so much for joining us on this bonus episode. And to our listeners, we hope that you also took a lot away, and we look forward to sharing more helpful tips and tricks in future episodes of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Until then, thanks so much for listening. Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us if you do these three things subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you’re listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable, please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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