January 2019

The manner in which programmatic platforms price inventory has undergone a sizable shift. In March of 2018, 338 billion ad impressions across 39 US supply-side platforms were analyzed by Getintent. Their findings revealed that 43.3% of these impressions were sold through first-price auctions, meaning that the highest bid wins an impression. Just last December (2017) the figure was significantly lower, when only 5.8% of the 171 billion impressions analyzed were sold in the same manner.

As many of our readers know, Genius Monkey is a regular participant in the Digital Summits held around the nation, where we share our philosophies and best practices in the field of digital programmatic in today’s marketing. Digital Summit attendees are the movers and shakers that influence the growth and success of their company’s digital marketing efforts, as well as the future landscape of the digital economy. They hail from a broad variety of companies and organizations including national brands, CPG, agencies, service providers, technology pioneers, B&B providers, associations and nonprofits, startups and much more.

Today’s customers are getting tough to keep up with! They no longer buy things based on impulse or first impressions; they do their homework for just about all of their purchases. They also want to be supported throughout their purchase journey – at each stage – in a relevant way, by the brand. This same technology that keeps these consumers in the know, can also help marketers. One of these tools that advertisers can use to meet the high expectations of their customers is machine learning (the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to progressively improve their performance on a specific task).

During the year of 2017, and for the first time in history, the giant duo of Facebook and Google slipped in their market share. And, surprisingly, this came BEFORE the Guardian and the New York Times unleashed their exposés on the topic of Cambridge Analytica, in which it was discovered that Facebook had been aggressively marketing users’ data with little transparency or agency! Consumers expect their brands to be above board and honest.

Autonomous vehicles (otherwise known as self-driving cars (or driverless cars) are beginning to make their way onto our roads and highways. These latter-day driving machines use sensory data collected from their surrounding environment to navigate the roadways sans the help of a human driver. Case in point: Uber recently ordered 24,000 fully autonomous Volvos Tesla just introduced an electric-powered long-haul tractor trailer with self-driving capabilities, and UPS has pre ordered 125 of them Google just ordered several thousand autonomous vehicles for its self-driving fleet (currently operating on the roads of Arizona) Google is expected to serve ads in their self-driving cars driverless car revenue in the US is expected to reach roughly $2.

Now that we have turned the corner onto 2019 Street, Genius Monkey will take this time to reflect on the outstanding year we’ve had, and rev up for an even bigger, better year for the constant growth and improvement of the programmatic digital ecosystem! According to recent research by Zenith Media, the boom of programmatic advertising will continue its momentum for years to come. As an example, they forecast these programmatic trends in 2019:

Any emerging technology inevitably enters the ring of advertising. Augmented and virtual reality, visual search, chatbots and voice commerce have all been on the radar of retailers as the next big possibility of marketing. Let’s take a look at one of the newest kids on the block – Voice Assistants. Smart speakers, like Amazon Echo and Google Home have exploded onto the scene with a velocity and a pervasiveness that is pretty much unprecedented in the history of consumer electronics.

Perhaps the most noticeable change in the field of data analytics is how rapidly it’s growing. Every year companies are able to gain more data from their customer interactions, and the lag time between feedback and insights continues to shrink. It’s also true that customers are often very informed, coming to your website already knowing what they want, and how much they’re prepared to spend. Data analytics is the means by which companies can better connect with those savvy customers.

Data is the reigning king of marketing, and continues to increase in power as technology continues to proliferate throughout the industry. It’s not so much the actual data that is so important, but what it is that marketers can do with it in the world of programmatic digital advertising. 75% of all marketers interviewed agree that a lack of understanding of data analytics is a big barrier to making important decisions based on data insights.