Lost in Translation : Power of the Creative in a dominant Programmatic World

We've come a full circle - from our days of traditionally booking media on reserved CPMs with a publisher to the current evolving mechanics of Programmatic Reservations and Automated Guarantees. What has really changed in between is that we've introduced automation in the process to make it more efficient. Problem is, for most brand marketers that's the desired end of the line. The state of Programmatic advertising is not only witnessing different adoption rates in different markets but also starkly different brand inclusions. That's an entire debate that it can get us into as to what is causing this and what is the ideal way forward - but that's for another day. What is more important in today's programmatic lay of the land, irrespective of market adoption and inclusion, is the power it can garner over the long tail of your marketing efforts - but what are we ignoring?

The problem stems from the treatment - I think it's about time that agencies and brands start realizing that Programmatic is not just a line item on a media plan - it's a strategy that needs to be built out in a brand's overall marketing mechanics ; and in that, the Programmatic Creative today plays a pivotal role.

The power of the creative is one of the most overlooked and unexplored aspect across the ecosystem. A creative is more than just a Rich Media execution or a half page sponsorship or a roadblock during Black Friday - A creative is the apparatus which allows you to speak to your consumer and enables your brand to generate the buzz it demands. Should your message not be as important as the medium then? In assessing advertising and marketing efforts, effective marketing analytics should encompass both the power of the message and the medium instead of treating them in silos.

The onset of Augmented Reality in advertising has set the precedence for the engagement that consumers generate in advertisements that appear to them as more inclusive and closer to reality - have our programmatic ads changed since then? Even a simple message when communicated through powerful formats and creative brilliance can garner much more engagement and consumer attachment to a brand. Programmatic capabilities have advanced in leaps and bounds but have we? Marketers today are faced with certain distinct challenges when creative investments are in discussion. I'll try to dispel some of these challenges which seem apparent to brands but are really not that difficult to circumvent :

1. Doesn't it throttle my scale? : Well hello, good news - No! It doesn't! It doesn't if you build out your strategies appropriately. Most of the mature publishers today are working with programmatic solutions and their page capacities to utilize the current and evolved state of ad inventory to respond to creativity. So scale really shouldn't be a concern - what should be a concern rather is that is your brand messaging strong enough?
2. I'm struggling with Creative resources: Is that really an issue? Well not if you're choosing Programmatic to address your creative messaging and brand building and while you're at it, take an informed decision in choosing your demand and tech partners - Some of the platform solution partners are way too savvy and evolved than you imagine. Let them help you build out your creative value proposition - and do ensure that you're working closely with them to leverage their technical expertise and the value of the platform to its fullest potential.
3. I'm being charged higher Programmatic CPMs - it's increasing my overall costs: This is a very critical aspect and it is extremely essential that this bridge is crossed with the brand in its most appropriate form. Two things here - the manner is which programmatic has been sold to clients in many markets (purely due to lack of skill set and understanding of the topic) has made "efficient" synonymous with "cheap" and that has made an indelible dent in the mind of the marketers that programmatic CPMs would be cheaper and that would increase the brand's ROI and generate savings. Well, if your agency or demand partner is charging you a higher CPM now, you are probably in good hands. With the gradual betterment of ad viewability and reduction in ad fraud post the adoption of ads.txt and a host of other measures to address ad fraud, the industry is witnessing an increase in CPMs which probably are the actual price points that needs clearing on human traffic.
4. But what about my ROI? I expect improved leads and sales figures: Every brand should ideally follow the route of the consumer funnel / AIDA model in their marketing economics. There is no sales without adequate brand building - and when you've built out a stronger brand with the power of strong creative workflows, formats and messaging, your performance goals become much more easier to achieve. If you're a brand who already has built itself, then you need to make an assessment of short term vs long term objectives to achieve. Direct Response advertisers should be more akin to moving towards a Dynamic creative workflow and dynamic ads which for sustained campaigns reduce the overall cost of creative production and also enables you to work on a leaner budget because it lets you optimize on audience sets which generate more revenue for your brand and have a higher propensity of converting leads to potential customers for your business. So, ROI? Gets better over the long term, does it not? While choosing programmatic and understanding that we're buying audiences and not impressions, it is essential to evaluate the lifetime value of a consumer rather than a campaign impression value.
5. Why do I choose a programmatic creative and not a value sponsorship directly with a publisher: The segments of discussion that this can go into would be innumerable but let me just focus on the fact that you wouldn't want to miss the intelligence that your programmatic creative data is highlighting for you. As display ad objectives move beyond normal direct response, nuanced perspective on performance gain importance. The robust real-time analytics and insights that your data is going to generate for you would allow you to build more efficient audience and media strategies, let you optimize your budgets and increase your brand relevance manifold. Coupled with that are your capabilities to switch on and off, or change messaging dynamically at no added production costs - I couldn't see more pressing reasons why any brand wouldn't choose programmatic, self-optimized creatives for their business.

The bigger problem however is that we have brands trying to use a broadcast mentality with digital when it’s actually a post-broadcast, much more target-able medium when it comes to digital and programmatic in general. We need to stop creating one-size-fits-all ads and invest more on an effective, non-intrusive, impactful, consumer oriented creative approach. The necessity to switch to a consumer focused creative approach stems from the fact that losing a consumer's touch can erode significant brand value - because a brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is, it is what consumers tell each other it is.

Programmatic creatives harvest a huge value proposition in its accessibility to scale, data, ease of workflow and long term cost efficiencies - let's not lose in translation, the real power of the programmatic creative medium and let's not forget that a medium is only as strong as the context/messaging - make it compelling!