Attila Jakab, Managing Director at Infectious Media, features in Digiday, giving his insight as to the complications with having programmatic in-house.
A recent survey from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) revealed that 21 percent of members are now buying programmatic in-house or via a hybrid model. A further 16 percent plan to in future. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
There’s no blueprint
Programmatic agencies have had the better part of a decade to refine their strategy. “But there is no rule book for advertisers,” explained Attila Jakab, MD of agency Infectious Media. Terms like in-house and hybrid are thrown around plenty, but it’s difficult to find a universal definition of either.
While it’s cost prohibitive for brands to build their own proprietary technology, most will license it from vendors and handle their first-party data themselves. Unilever, for instance, licenses its own DMP and has a say in choosing both its DSP and its ad server. Its agencies manage its third-party data. But other advertisers are opting only to keep strategy in-house. Additionally, the degree to which advertisers involve their media and creative agencies varies.
“No two examples are exactly the same. Everyone is turning the dial here and there slightly,” said Matt Green, the WFA’s digital marketing head. It doesn’t help that these models are often kept behind closed doors either.
In programmatic, it’s the opposite. Working out the best choice from a glut of inventory partners on a global scale isn’t easy. And then you’ve got brand safety and measurement still to consider. Plus, the ecosystem moves with incredible speed, and keeping up requires work. “Your stack today is not going to be your stack next year,” he explained.
It’s a fast-changing landscape
Attila Jakab, MD of Infectious Media, said that taking programmatic in-house is very different to an area like search. There, the ecosystem is dominated by Google so there’s no need for brands to pursue new data sources.