It may be widely touted to bring about improved efficiencies with automation, but programmatic does not mean machines should completely take over media buying and campaign management.

Such misconceptions persist in the Asia-Pacific region and need to be properly addressed, urges Adform Asia-Pacific head Rohit Kumar, in this Q&A with ExchangeWire. He explains why programmatic initiatives cannot be managed in autopilot and highlights two key components that should be in any successful campaign.

ExchangeWire: Adform recently opened offices in Singapore and Istanbul. Can you share your growth plans for the region?

Rohit Kumar: We are in the process of hiring our regional leadership team to be based in Singapore. In 2016, we are focused on the Southeast Asian opportunity and will be investing in developing our presence and building a regional hub in Singapore to service this key market. Beyond Southeast Asia, we have our eyes on India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan in 2017, and beyond.

What differences are you seeing in the Asia-Pacific ad tech ecosystem, compared to the UK or US? Will these change the way you address this region?

One obvious difference is the sheer diversity of the region. With more than one billion connected users, it has more web users than any other region. Between China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Malaysia – just to name a few – it has never been more important to localise. For us, country-specific premium inventory, data partnerships, local currency billing, and bespoke creative formats are all part of our go-to market strategy before we launch operations in any country. This is especially important in Asia-Pacific.

We also are seeing varying levels of maturity in the ad tech ecosystem across the region, with Singapore leading the way, and where the conversations on programmatic are fairly advanced, and at times almost on par with those in the UK or US. Other markets in Southeast Asia are early in the adoption curve where evangelising and education are still needed.

Rohit Kumar

India tends to be very performance-driven, such that programmatic is almost considered as a synonym for direct response, and this notion is not doing the industry any favours.

What challenges do advertisers and marketers here face, and what opportunities do these present for Adform in this region?

Asia presents some very interesting challenges to marketers, especially in re-thinking customer experiences to be not just mobile-first, but also mobile-only, in certain markets. eMarketer forecasts that there will be just over 1.1 billion smartphone users across the region by the end of this year. While this may seem like a huge number, it's important to remember that the region's penetration rate currently is only about 40%, indicating there's plenty of headroom for further growth. This represents a significant opportunity for a truly screen-agnostic programmatic solution.

With programmatic adoption still low in Asia-Pacific, what key barriers do the industry need to break down for marketers, agencies, and publishers to come onboard?

For me, I feel the biggest barrier is the narrative itself. The industry has not done itself any favours by talking up programmatic into an alphabet soup of three-letter acronyms. In some of the newer markets in Asia-Pacific, we have to go back to the basics and address this question: Why is it good for advertisers?

The ad tech industry needs to help marketers meet their objectives, dejargonise, and speak to advertisers and publishers in their language.

What are some major misconceptions marketers in Asia-Pacific have about programmatic?

The first has to do with the way in which some of these countries operate – fast-paced, chaotic, and with expectations that they want fulfilled overnight. Patience can be a virtue and, too often, we see advertisers expecting to see radical change in the first days of a new campaign.

The answer lies in education and setting the right expectations. The ideal duration for a test campaign with a new vendor, for instance, is a quarter, not a month.

Second, programmatic is not push-button automation and does not mean machines are taking over media buying and campaign management can go on autopilot. In fact, it's quite the opposite. A good programmatic campaign has two main components: great technology, and an even greater media buyer. Your bidder may be able to analyse a million impression opportunities and respond with unique bid variations; but establishing a strategy that's driven by a human is paramount, especially in a business that changes as quickly as ad tech does.

You need to set the right KPIs, bring in external datasets, negotiate off-exchange direct deals, but execute these programmatically, split-test creatives, integrate CRM data… the list is endless. For a new marketer or publisher who's sitting on the fence, it's critical to understand the wider strategic advantage that programmatic offers and this goes beyond simple process automation.

Adform secured USD$21.5m (£14.7m) in funds last December; the bulk of which, however, will go towards expansion plans in the US. Any plans to find more funds to support your growth plans in Asia?

At Adform, rather than purchasing market share, our focus is on building a long-term sustainable business for the benefit of our clients. This model has proven to be successful as we remain a profitable company, in contrast to the majority of our competitors. We have the cash we need in order to invest in Asia, as well as the US, and have managed to do this with success in 16 countries. We enter each market with a long-term plan focused on positioning, revenue, and profitability.

Ad fraud has become a real concern for marketers who, as a result, may push away from programmatic. Where has the ad tech community gone wrong here, and how should it now resolve this problem?

Ad fraud, or non-human traffic, has unfortunately existed for as long as the internet. In many ways, though, ad tech has helped to create a degree of visibility about the prevalence of non-human traffic, and has done this this primarily in three ways.

First, programmatic advertising has added transparency to digital advertising since everything is available in real-time, which means we can differentiate between the premium ad tech companies and the more suspicious ones.

Second, we're also able to vet the publishers we onboard and ensure we aren't integrating with sites that have only been built to sell phony impressions.

Third, we have the technology to build non-human traffic detectors as an integrated part of the ad tech stack to ensure advertisers and agencies get good quality for their money.

There has been much discussion about the emergence of walled gardens. How should the industry go about tackling this?

Walled gardens are really great for targeting with high accuracy and can be very effective. However, they also can result in strategic and operational costs. Closed ecosystems not only increase the cost of media management, it prevents brands from serving audience-driven, personalised, and relevant advertising to consumers across channels.

Sole reliance on walled gardens impedes brands in the long term as marketers lose ownership of key data pertaining to their customers over time and will have to depend on walled gardens for customer intelligence. It's crucial not to rely too heavily on walled gardens and work with an open platform with a universal ID graph, as this will pay off many times in the long term with regards to media and marketing converge.