Highlights from Programmatic Colombo 2020

Programmatic Colombo, the first event of its kind was successfully held in Sri Lanka, organizedby Adstudio.Cloud, on the 16^th of September 2020, at the Kingsbury Hotel Colombo. Though it was originally planned to accommodate only 100 participants in terms of brand marketers, publishers and agencies;there were over 300 requestsand Adstudio.Cloud successfully extended the capacity for 200 participants. The guest speaker Matt Prohaska, ex programmatic director at New York Times, shared his 26 years of experience in the realm of digital media and advertising technology to raise awareness and to educatethe marketing fraternity in light of Programmatic Advertising.

Programmatic Advertising Defined.

Advertising has always been about connecting with the customers and with technology it has evolved vastly over the past few years, to the point where advertisements display targeting its viewers, programmatically.  However, it will not stop there. Programmatic advertising technology itself is ever evolving. Currently in the US, more than 83% of digital advertising takes place programmatically and in India it is close to 30%.

Programmatic advertisingis the automation of data-informed buying, selling, and/or delivery method for many types of digital advertising . It is a Data-driven targeted advertising mechanism which provides tangible benefits to enhance the overall campaign performance. Focusing on the Demand Side Platform (DSP) or buyers’/brands’ side of programmatic advertising, there are 5 stages for programmatic buying. First, the brands need to determine the objectives, then they need to build strategies, pick their targets, activate, and then optimize their campaigns.  On the Supplier Side Platform (SSP) or the publisher side, programmatic advertising provides the opportunity for them to offer their ad-inventory to multiple advertisers, thus increasing the revenue generation for the publishers.

About Adstudio.Cloud

Adstudio.Cloud is Sri Lanka’s premier advertising technology company, specialized in Programmatic Advertising, Data engineering, Digital PR and Audience Management. As the first programmatic ecosystem,Adstudio.Cloud, serves the objective of supporting the Sri Lankan economy by retaining valuable foreign exchangewithin the country which otherwise would flow out of the country. Led by the best minds in the industrythis platform follows global standards to level up the programmatic advertising in Sri Lanka through smart tools, sustainable strategy and intelligent systems.

Adstudio is the only ecosystem to comprehensively cover the supply side technology (SSP): the local publishers and demand side technology (DSP): Advertisers and agencies; where it connects both sides seamlessly to help reach the right audience at the right time while maximizing revenue generation for the publishers and conversions for advertisers.

Adstudio has acquired a vast knowledge in the ad-tech domain.Equipped with dedicated technology specialists and data scientists with over 30 years of experience collectively, digital strategists, campaign success managers, dedicated support team, expertise in consumer journey mapping, over 2000 creative templates for ad-campaigns, Adstudio.Cloud thrives to provide a full stack service in the ad-tech industry.

With a wealth of over 312 publishers (English, Sinhala, Tamil), Adstudio.Cloud has executed over 617 campaigns and served over 570 000 000 impressions over the last year to a proven portfolio of clients from over 15 industries.Adstudio’s vision is to extendthe programmatic ecosystem to international ad-exchanges, to connected TV and to Digital Out of Home (DOOH) advertising,

Machine learning and technology are key features of programmatic advertising. During the session of Programmatic Colombo, Mattexplained what Programmatic Advertising is, what’s in it for the publishers, strategies for the publishers to grow revenue, what’s in it for the buyers/ brands, strategies for brands to achieve better ROI, future of programmatic, opportunities and challenges for sellers and buyers.

Programmatic Advertising for Publishers

Programmatic advertising provides convenience for the publishers to sell their advertising space. With the AI and automation tools integrated into the system, publishers canoptimize their ad sales and save time required to find advertisers. It also helps serve viewer centric ad campaigns which are highly relevant to the viewers and with which they are more likely to engage. Efficiency is another benefit of programmatic advertising for the publishers whichhelps them to maximize revenue generation from their available ad space while reducing costs and increasing margins.

Should publishers have all of their content on social media? Mat, with his experience at New York Times, one of the early and successful adopters of programmatic technology in the world,  said NO. It is not advisable for publishers to push all their content and marketing efforts on social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Google or any other because publishers may experience traffic at the beginning but the revenue may start to dwindle.  Thus it has to be a balance between having a sneak-peak that drive traffic to their own sites versus highlighting content that gives them thorough brand exposure on social media.

Adstudio.Cloud is the only platform in Sri Lanka which supports the local SSPs and to advertise content in all 3 languages (English, Sinhala, Tamil).This has allowed to reach the correct target audience with the most appealing ad creative in the language of the targeted audience for better conversions.

Adstudio.Cloud allows the local publishers to place campaigns directly on their network without having to go through Google or any other foreign network. This in fact allows them to obtain maximum monetization with their available ad inventory.As a result, it helps to retain ad revenue within the country and within the local publisher network. Not only that, but also Adstudio network has gone a step further by supporting the SSPs and DSPs to connect with ad networks internationally, creating further value to both publishers and advertisers equally.

Audience Manager is the backbone of the entire ecosystem of Adstudio,where it allows publishers to enhance the value creation through the quality profiling of viewers, giving them access to target the right ad campaign to the right person on Real Time Bidding (RTB).

With the objective of enhancing support to the Sri Lankan economy,Adstudio.Cloud provides value added services, including technical support for the publishes, advice on how to increase more traffic to the website, how to improve content quality and many more.

Programmatic Advertising for Brand Marketers/Advertisers

Programmatic advertising offers a multitude of benefitsfor Brand marketersincludingReal-Time Optimization, Better Reach, Contextual Campaigns,Less Wastageand many more.

Given the automated nature of programmatic ad buying, the risk of error is minimized. It also offers the ground to eliminate waste in terms of reducing impressions being wasted, andtargeting correct consumers for the correct ads. Adstudio.Cloud provides direct access to insightful data analytics through the campaign manager system, where the brand marketers can monitor the performance of their ad campaigns. With this, brands will witness improved Return on Investment (ROI).

Contextual Campaigns on the other hand is potentially one of the most advanced aspect of programmatic. With contextual campaigns, marketers have control over who sees which ads, and at what times. This increases the chances of showing the right advert at the right time to the right consumer, who will then click and engage with the brand.Moreover, the feature offrequency cappinglimits how often the same individual would see a certain advert and it’s a great way of ensuring lean spending and avoiding ineffective exposures.

The possibilities are endless with Programmatic advertising across any industry. For example, retail companies can benefit from the ability to push specific products through retargeting. Travel corporations can target customers through geolocation within a set distance of the place they’re advertising for. With the powerful set of toolsit offers, marketers canoptimize Programmatic advertising for greater marketing performance, transparency, and ROI for marketing budgets.

Future of Programmatic Advertising

The future of Programmatic Advertising is omni-channelsays Matt Prohaska. The default of every standardized ad-campaign would be done programmatically. Currently it is more than 80% of display advertising, more than 60% mobile, video ads more than 58%, social media more than 32% and on TV it’s close to 8% in the international arena which run programmatically.

It amazing to see how certain countries are taking Digital Out of Home (DOOH) screens to go programmatic to display relevant ad campaigns to those who pass by. For example: in airports, shopping centers and other locations that people gather, the digital screens are being set to run programmatically.

DigitalX (Pvt) Ltd. is a fully owned Sri Lankan company; the only Adtech R&D company in Sri Lanka. For more information, visit www.adstudio.cloud www.digitalxlabs.com