This week roughly 90,000 marketing and advertising professionals from around the world are gathered in New York for the 10th annual Advertising Week gathering, and the topic on everyone’s mind is Big Data.
According to a new poll from Gartner, nearly two-thirds of companies are planning to increase investments in data analytics this year, with media and communications firms leading the way. The message in those numbers is not lost on the participants of Advertising Week, many of whom are showcasing new applications grounded in data science and designed to drive everything from creative development to new advances in media buying.
On the buying front, programmatic buying was the topic of discussion in one of the most talked about events of the week’s festivities. On Monday, AOL tapped Nate Silver – the famous data scientist – to promote their Programmatic Upfront. The event brought together major agencies and brands on the cutting edge of the technology.
Programmatic buying – of which real-time bidding (RTB) is the most popular component – describes online display advertising that is aggregated, booked, flighted, analyzed and optimized via software and algorithms. Using automated ad exchanges, RTB allows display marketers to target individuals rather than a website’s entire audience.
In real-time bidding (RTB), online publishers auction off their available ad inventory as an individual impression via the ad exchange. Advertisers or media buyers use the ad exchange to bid in real-time per impression. AOL’s Tim Armstrong is betting on programmatic buying to propel the company’s emerging AOL Networks initiative and has been ramping up its real-time bidding platform through in-house development and acquisition.
Josh Jacobs, Global CEO of Accuen, Omnicom Media Group’s programmatic agency, and Frank Wong, Digital Director for Hyatt Hotels, took the stage after Armstrong to present a case for how data helps marketers make smarter investment decisions and decrease media waste using programmatic technology. Using Accuen’s analytics platform, Hyatt was able to break away from a “one size fits all strategy” and create targeted and tailored strategies to reach the female business travel for a recent campaign for the Hyatt Women’s Experience.
According to eMarketer, advertisers will spend more than $3.36 billion for display ads through RTB, amounting to 73% growth for 2013. By 2017, RTB is expected to account for nearly a third of all digital display spending.