Since updating Adobe Media Optimizer, the programmatic advertising arm of its Marketing Cloud platform, Adobe Systems Inc. has been quick to let advertisers know what they stand to gain by using programmatic ads – that is, automating the process of purchasing digital ads – and will continue doing so during the ICA-hosted FFWD Advertising & Marketing Week in Toronto, where Adobe’s group product marketing manager, Pete Kluge, will be leading a presentation on Jan. 27.
The presentation will outline how automated advertising can help advertisers manage, optimize, and deliver their campaigns in a way that maximizes efficiency, audience size, and return on investment.
“[Advertisers] care about who they want to reach – the audience – where they are going to reach those audiences… and what methods or content they are going to deliver to individual users,” Kluge says, adding that programmatic advertising delivers on all counts.
Citing IDC’s Worldwide Programmatic Display Advertising Forecast, Kluge says that global transactions for display ads, including banners, videos, search engines and social media, are expected to be worth $56 billion by 2019, with North American spending alone worth $30 billion. Half will be paid for automatically.
“That’s a massive opportunity, and obviously a big reason that we’re focusing on this,” Kluge says.
Of course, with the increased popularity of programmatic comes a deluge of software choices, and Kluge isn’t shy when it comes to explaining why he believes Adobe’s products stand out.
“It’s a very complex ecosystem out there,” he says. “There are hundreds of vendors available, and we break it down, really, into what we see advertisers finding most important.”
For example, many advertisers are demanding increased transparency regarding cost and ad performance, Kluge says. To accommodate them, Adobe Media Optimizer allows users to not only see the precise cost of each ad, divided by location, but also a variety of reports, some of them based on information drawn from the Marketing Cloud platform, others based on third-party data that divides consumers into such categories as age, gender, income range, and lifestyle.
The result, Kluge says, is software that not only makes it easier to purchase ads, but allows marketers to focus on their most receptive audiences, optimizing their employers’ marketing budgets in the process.
“Did someone do a search first, then see a display ad, then go to Facebook and see an ad, then do another search, and then transact?” Kluge says. “We’re able to capture all of that information in different ways.”
