Trade magazine Campaign Asia-Pacific this week hosts the inaugural Marketing Innovation Summit, an event aimed specifically at educating brand marketers in the region about programmatic buying. ExchangeWire spoke with Gabriel Jor, the conference curator, to get insights into the impetus to launch this event and to Janice Chan from Starwood, to get her take on the state of programmatic in Asia.

Jor says the rationale behind the event is that corporates in Asia are facing internal pressure from HQ to take the step towards programmatic buying but they’re not sure how to go about it.

He acknowledges there are already lots of events talking about programmatic but he maintains most of those are very technical and full of jargon. Typically the speakers are from either vendors or agencies, with undisclosed hidden agendas.

In researching the event, everyone Jor spoke to had a different interpretation of what programmatic actually means and how to go about adopting it in their business.  The event thus promotes the opportunity to meet and compare strategy with peers from across Asia and other parts of the world.

Unusually for an event of this type in Asia, and in-line with the intention to educate and inform, at least 50% of the speakers at this event are actual brand marketers.

These include Dominic Koh, MasterCard Worldwide, head of digital marketing, Asia Pacific,  Janice Chan, Starwood Hotels & Resorts , senior director, digital marketing, Asia Pacific, among senior marketers from Standard Charter Bank, Kimberly Clark and others*.

Some of the brands present, such as Janice Chan from Starwood, are known to be extensively using programmatic tools already via Possible, Starwood’s digital agency. Chan says if a marketer is buying media, they need to understand programmatic.

Trust and understanding the right questions to ask your agency are key to making programmatic work for your business. In setting up their programmatic investment, Chan worked closely with her agency team to evaluate the tools and technologies available in the market.

Since then, there’s been lots of experimentation and testing to see what works and to optimise the price and results.  Top of mind at all times for Chan is not tainting the user experience.

The issues of ongoing concern to Chan are  privacy – protecting the customer experience and not being “to creepy” and transparency – verifying where your ads end up and whether they’re being seen.  Finally, the results matter – as a marketer, relying on the agency to deliver the agreed ROI. Chan recommends marketers ask their agency “How do I know I’m not wasting my media dollars?!”

As the event purports, technology has had a dramatic effect on marketing and is reshaping the role and responsibilities of CMOs and digital marketers. The day’s content will educate around making the leap to programmatic buying, targeting the right audience, cost of programmatic buying, brand safety, and the future technology to programmatic buying.  ExchangeWire will cover the brand sentiment from the event in a future post.

*Rupa Rajamani, Standard Chartered Bank, head of owned and earned media, digital, group brand & marketing,  John Sinke, Resorts World Sentosa, assistant VP, digital marketing, ecommerce & social media, Eddy Chan, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, marketing technology leader,  Asia Pacific,and Ian Darric Macariola, BeMyGuest, head of digital marketing, will all be attending the event.

This article was written by ExchangeWire's Wendy Hogan