5 Big Myths About Programmatic Ad Buying

By Brian Morrissey • February 1, 2013 •

The world has gone gaga over programmatic ad buying. More money is shifting to automated ad systems that promise greater efficiency and better performance.

Yet with an area as complex and fast-moving as this, there’s bound to be some disputes over what it means. Digiday asked several execs for their takes on what the biggest myths out there are. Here’s what they said.

Bye-Bye People
“The reality is programmatic is no more the magic bullet than any other single arrow in the quiver of a marketer, and for a marketer to arrive at the right solution set, they’re going to need a combination of things.” — Meredith Levien, chief revenue officer, Forbes Media

You Know Which Audiences Work
“The truth is we buy total performance, and we don’t have a lot of exposure to which audiences are performing best.” — Barry Lowenthal, president, The Media Kitchen

There’s Transparency
“There’s still a lot of lack of understanding on the part of clients and agencies, and, therefore, they’re not getting the transparency they should because they’re not asking for it.” Joanna O’Connell, research analyst, Forrester

The Race to the Bottom
“It’s a way to attribute value based on the context, the data and the environment that publishers provide for the right audiences.” — Brendan Moorcroft, CEO, Mediabrands Audience Platform

Programmatic = Ad Exchanges
“We’re really trying to figure out how do we bridge sales and weather, which are both incredibly dynamic marketplaces, leveraging technology in the media marketplace so that marketers can sell the products they want to sell off our data in an easy way.” — Curt Hecht, chief revenue officer, The Weather Company

See the video below for the execs’ full responses.