Investment, header bidding, machine learning, programmatic and creative, programmatic TV and video, data-driven publishing and the evolution of buy-side technology: 3 November saw the third annual ATS New York – a day packed full of content, bringing a whole host of industry experts on stage to share their views and opinions. 

The continued growth of Programmatic TV

Programmatic TV and video was a big focus of the day, with the opening fireside chat between Ciaran O’Kane, CEO, ExchangeWire and Joshua Wepman, managing director, GCA Savvian Advisors alluding to the defensiveness of major broadcasters driving the existing wave of acquisitions in this area, such as by Comcast and AT&T, as they are seeing threats to their existing businesses. “Pieces may come from other worlds,” said Wepman, “but the thesis will be around programmatic TV.”

Elsewhere, the conversation turned to how programmatic TV is growing in the US market. During the ‘Making Upper Funnel Metrics Work with Programmatic’ panel, Dom Joseph, CEO and co-founder, Captify explained how the ability to drive insights pushes the agenda of programmatic TV among advertisers, versus traditional, linear TV. “Creating a user ID from an OTT box,” explained Joseph, “brings audiences that are highly profiled. As soon as you have a user coming from a set-top box, you have the ability to drive insights in real time, rather than waiting for panel results. You can tailor the creative and adapt it to the market.”

During his keynote speech, Brian Stempeck, chief client officer, The Trade Desk highlighted that, despite the measurement and targeting capabilities programmatic TV offers, investment lags far behind consumption and challenges such as agency politics and advertiser education need to be addressed to help to move that needle.

According to Adam Heimlich, SVP programmatic, MD of HX, Horizon Media, percentage growth in programmatic TV make look positive, but as TV budgets are so large, it doesn't take much to double the size of the addressable TV pool.

Neil Smith, VP marketplaces, FreeWheel looked beyond programmatic TV, into how the growth of programmatic video is changing the ecosystem during his keynote speech. Smith referred to ‘the new living room’, highlighting that in Q2 2016, 66% of ad views came from devices other than desktops, with a 66% YOY increase in the number of ad views coming from OTT devices. However, the volume of those views being transacted programmatically are still on the low side: despite a 59% YOY growth, only 9.1% of video ad views come from automated transaction models and the only way for this to change is for direct sales and market-generated demand teams to work together.

How do we start to drive the growth of automated transactions in video and TV? According to Smith, it’s all about trust, realignment of goals, collaboration and the re-evaluation of your existing transaction model.

Bring Your Own Algorithms (BYOA)

A topic that featured heavily throughout the day, having first been floated during Stempeck’s keynote, was the concept of BYOAlgorithm. Stempeck explained how companies can save time, scale faster, and gain access to more data by building on APIs. Dispelling the potential audience notion that building your own algorithms might be too advanced, Stempeck was keen to point out you don’t need to hire a team of ten data scientists, you just need help to rank types of qualities making one customer more attractive than another and that doesn’t need to come from a PHD.

Nathan Woodman, general manager, Demand Solutions, IPONWEB took the concept of BYOAlgorithm one step further during his keynote presentation, explaining how Open Machine Learning puts BYOAs into practice, with an open request to the industry: can we make an ‘Open Machine Learning’ framework a reality? Woodman explained how the sheer volume of data in existence is far beyond the limits of human cognitive power and brands need machine learning capabilities to provide them with competitive data advantages. An open source framework, which can be plugged into multiple platforms, will normalise machine learning in the industry.

Looking at the future of buy-side technology, Dan de Sybel, CTO, Infectious Media referred to BYOA and Open Machine Learning as huge and a game changer, but in the short term, cited DigiTrust and its aim to remove multiple cookie syncs through a universal user token as a major development in industry standardisation.

The changing role of the agency

A topic of discussion throughout the day, agency politics, and ownerships and responsibilities appear to still weigh heavily on the agenda, with Adam Heimlich, SVP programmatic, MD of HX, Horizon Media explaining during the 'Upper Funnel Metrics' panel, that the agency relationship is evolving as advertiser priorities shift, but it’s painful to consolidate departments and even harder to find the talent, as agencies start to play a more consultative over executional role. “Digital agencies are evolving to the old agency model,” explained Heimlich, “as they have to adapt to the marketplace.

During the same discussion, Tyler Pietz, VP programmatic, Cadreon argued agency holding companies can offer marketplace knowledge and client understanding and this is helping their case over the likes of McKinsey and Deloitte moving into the same space, who just don’t have the hands on experience.

With constantly changing roles and responsibilities, the risk of new market entrants, challenges around transparency, agencies are finding it harder, but as confirmed throughout the day, agencies must evolve: something reiterated in the final panel of the day, ‘The Evolution of Buy-Side Tech’ by the collective group discussing Infectious Media’s play in the market, sitting in between the traditional agency and the traditional tech vendor, inciting the question of whether an agency really is an agency anymore.

Getting the creative right

Creative execution still ranks highly on everyone’s agenda, with Erica Schmidt, managing director, North America, Cadreon bluntly saying during the ‘Can the Combination of the Creative & Programmatic Execution Yield Better Results for Marketers?’ panel that we need to get the basics right and stop delivering bad creative ads generally, before we can hope to effectively combine creative and programmatic. With both Schmidt and Julian Baring, general manager, North America, Adform placing importance on the execution layers within agencies needing to work much more closely with creative agencies and advertisers, if we have a hope of seeing the collaboration between programmatic and creative. According to Schmidt, all three parties need to leave their job titles at the door and have fluid campaign discussions to make it work and the ownership should lie with everyone, but, as Baring confirmed, the advertiser needs to lead the charge.

According to Jana Meron, VP of programmatic and data strategy, Business Insider, on the panel discussion ‘Is Programmatic Video Going to Change the Media Buying Landscape?’, buyer education is imperative. “Buyers need to understand,” said Meron, “more than 50% of video inventory is mobile so VPAID won’t work, yet they keep sending VPAID creatives.”

There's hope, and that lies in the growing trend of digital creative teams cropping up within agency programmatic buying teams, confirmed Schmidt and Baring.

Across many panels, the plight of the consumer was raised, with many claiming the consumer still isn’t the priority when it comes to creative execution and delivery. The consensus being that creative is still technology-led, not consumer-led and that needs to change.