Programmatic’s Evolution Is Just Beginning

minonline.com

How do publishers successfully meet advertiser demand? Julie Clark, VP of programmatic sales at Hearst Core Audience, believes it starts with great inventory.

Clark understands programmatic advertising from both the supply and demand sides of the business. Before she joined Hearst, she was VP, agency & enterprise sales at Rocket Fuel, a demand-side platform provider, where she built the sales team in Central, East and Canadian regions.
On September 14, Clark will be among the prestigious panel of speakers at min’s Programmatic Selling Conference on the “Strategies to Manage and Sell Your Inventory.”  We caught up with her beforehand to learn more about her philosophy on programmatic selling and what publishers still don’t “get” about this relatively new way of doing business.
min: How do you describe your job to people outside of the business?
Julie Clark: Specific to programmatic, I talk about how technology works in advertising, making marketing a seamless part of the user experience.
min: When was the first time you actually heard the word “programmatic?”
Clark: I can’t specifically remember, but I do recall first hearing about “exchanges” in 2008 and it was almost a dirty word and put on IO’s that we’d insure to “exclude all exchange inventory.” Times have changed!  I was working at a DSP at the time and “programmatic” just became the way to describe tech enabled RTB [real time bidding].
min: What sparked your interest about programmatic selling?
Clark: I was attracted to the technology powering marketing and the idea of smart buying tied to real KPI’s—programmatic was a natural path.

min: What was your first job that involved programmatic sales?
Clark: Rocket Fuel was my first official programmatic sales gig in 2010, but people were not even calling it “programmatic” at that time; they were just trying to figure out what DSP’s were and RTB.
min: What do you think most people don’t “get” about programmatic?
Clark: Last year I would have said that people don’t get that programmatic is more than RTB. That has diminished greatly. There is still a lingering perspective of “remnant” and “efficient” being connected to programmatic. Of course, efficiencies can be one part of a marketers programmatic strategy—but in the past 12 months the space has evolved in a way that has opened up true premium programmatic opportunities.
min: What have been the biggest advances in the last year?
Clark: Technological advances in automated guaranteed buying and header bidding have proven to be substantial. What’s most exciting about such advancements is the ability to strategically leverage programmatic buying tech for more sophisticated marketing goals and targeting. It is possible for a marketer to “own” their audience and leverage premium inventory for lower funnel KPI’s.
min: What still needs work?
Clark: Programmatic is an evolution, I think that there will always be work and advancements needed. The lowest hanging fruit is continuing towards automation of simple functionality and easier connections between programmatic technologies.