MindgruveMacarta attended Digiday’s Programmatic Summit in Palm Springs last month. Here’s a rundown of our key takeaways:
1. Navigating the Cookieless Future
Cookie deprecation being pushed out by Google doesn’t make cookieless strategies and pivots less urgent. We already see major data loss in ad servers that rely on cookies for attribution and from channels that serve on apps or in cookieless browsers. First-party data is key. We’re also seeing the rise of tapping into 2nd-party data and retail networks, such as Amazon and Walmart. Custom media mix modeling and attribution are necessary. The impact shouldn’t be felt as much by those who are prepared. As an industry, we don’t need to wait for Google to keep pivoting.
2. Transparency and Conscious Advertising
We wrote about SPO and the environmental effects of messy supply chains in programmatic. We could get to a place where CEOs and CFOs need to report on emissions from their media buys and will start asking their CMOs questions about it. Conscious advertising, more transparency, and industry standards are on the way. “Simplify the stack” and pare back to trusted partners and fewer SSPs. Ask hard questions. Don’t be complacent. SPO has been in the works for years, but it’s not done. It’s important to constantly audit down to a site level on your programmatic buys.
3. AI’s Role in Modern Agencies
AI is already inherent in many of our platforms and ways of working at progressive agencies (e.g., content creation and personalization, internal QA, chatbots, bid optimization, data analysis, etc). As an industry, we should lead with results and not use AI for the sake of the buzzword.
4. Reducing Pressure on Programmatic Traders
Teams cannot rely on programmatic traders to build AI solutions. It’s imperative to hire data engineers and AI engineers. As a programmatic team leader, I’m extremely grateful MindgruveMacarta is ahead of this. It seems many agencies are putting too much pressure on their trading teams which could lead to a mass exodus. (We’re hiring, by the way!)
5. Evolving Measurement Standards
Measurement is shifting. We can now prove that brand media helps performance media achieve even better business outcomes. New metrics to measure quality indexes — such as TVQI for CTV — and attention are here.
6. Simplifying Complex Media Inventory Stacks
Wouldn’t it be great to get to a place where we can prove that sustainable, brand-safe, diverse-owned and viewable media drives the best results and we can eliminate fraud? This is what we need to expect, demand and prove as an industry. We’ve made a bit of a mess of things with complex inventory stacks and now we need to clean it up together. We can simplify the middle — the mess between publishers and buyers.
Conclusion
We’re invested and ahead of the curve at MindgruveMacarta, but innovation is never checked off the list — it’s constant. We’re enthusiastic and grateful to be in an industry that has evolved drastically in the last ten years. To finally see data science merge with media strategy is exciting. It’s exciting to be part of the conversations to improve marketing, leverage AI, help businesses grow, and improve carbon emissions. We are here for it.
Want to ask a question or learn more? Get in touch with us today.
