Members of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Trading Committee have put together their top predictions and trends for 2020. From predicting a cookie-less christmas to TV manufacturers owning the Connected TV opportunity, take a look at what the committee have to say on where programmatic will go in 2020.
David Goddard, Chair of the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee and Senior Director, Business Development, EMEA, DoubleVerify
Advertisers’ appetite for Connected TV advertising inventory is at an all time high, so 2020 will be a year of growth. Naturally, CTV’s high value inventory will be targeted by fraudsters, thus we expect Ad fraud in this emerging environment to increase in volume and sophistication into 2020. We also anticipate progress in standardization that will facilitate consistent quality measurement – including viewability and brand safety – across CTV platforms and providers.
The growth, or re-emergence of contextual targeting will happen in 2020, as advertisers attempt to reach users in a post-GDPR world. With increased scrutiny and regulation around consumer privacy on the Internet, targeting audiences based on user data is becoming problematic for global brands. In response, contextual targeting at scale and publishers’ ability to package inventory in line with advertisers’ brand safety requirements, will become increasingly important.
2020 will bring Improved measurement to digital audio, that in-turn will lead to growth. Digital Audio is not a new concept, but as it grows, it is causing a shift-change in the advertising landscape. From streaming our favourite music to listening to the latest podcast, the additive nature of audio enables advertisers to avoid the fierce battle for the consumer’s screen and reach a highly engaged, captive audience. Despite these benefits, Audio is not being measured equally, making it hard to compare to the wider mediamix. In addition to measurement, greater quantity and variety of content will naturally increase brand safety concerns, meaning the need for quality authentication will grow, especially as more inventory becomes available both directly and programmatically
Léon Siotis. President of Europe, SpotX
2020 is the year we will see device manufacturers make sustainable claims in the TV advertising markets across Europe. In the past few years, we have seen the impact this group of companies have made in the U.S. and now we can expect to see similar strategies take hold here. Samsung’s ad-supported TV Plus proposition is now available in select European countries with plans to expand on this in 2020, while Roku inked their first European integrated TV OS partnership with Hisense, and Rakuten and Xumo have both struck their own integrated European partnerships with various manufacturers.
The integrated nature of these new offerings delivers a more seamless viewing experience, enabling video producers to discover new audiences for their content. Endemol has announced three channels for Samsung Plus and we expect to see many more launching across the various manufacturers in the new year. This will drive the entire category forward with advertisers and brands benefitting from the continuation of the popular big screen experience now coupled with unique data opportunities.
Not to be outdone, traditional broadcasters will continue to invest and see growth in their direct-to-consumer over-the-top (OTT) services. Sports has always been the biggest driver of live OTT viewing and the segment returns with a vengeance in 2020 with both the Euros and the Olympics. We expect to see record numbers of viewers watching these events across the various broadcaster apps, presenting a huge opportunity for them to deliver tailored advertising using server-side-ad-insertion (SSAI).
Akshay Bhattacharjee, Programmatic Solutions Specialist CEE & Nordics, Integral Ad Science
The Transparency Challenges of Programmatic
2019 saw greater demand from the buy side to have transparency into the quality of traffic coming from the sell side. This has on one hand created positive ripples, resulting in a better educated industry who are more up to date on fraud, brand safety and brand suitability and the impact these factors can have on the effectiveness of digital advertising. Brands and Agencies are also demanding this quality traffic by opting to collaborate with publishers and SSPs that are verified by third parties, such as Integral Ad Science, who can ensure humans, not bots, are viewing their ads. But whilst this level of awareness and industry knowledge will continue to grow in 2020, the sell side is likely to remain slow to full unveil the full blue print behind how their inventory is bought and sold.Hence, the Buzzword for 2020 would be Transparency.
Szymon Pruszyński, Head of Global Communication, Yieldbird
Next year will surely be full of changes and new exciting opportunities in the digital advertising industry for brands looking to reach their audience. As we are mostly focused on programmatic part of it we are very eager to see what will be the future of the third party cookie after Google will implement the announced changes on the Chrome browser level. We are expecting it will not create as many difficulties for the industry as changes on Safari and Mozilla did in the past few years, but it should give an opportunity for couple new companies to come up with new useful products and solutions, and it will require both advertisers and publishers to adjust their advertising strategies. The buzzword for 2020 can surely be context, as without vast recognition of users in the internet proper context can be much more significant to introduce brands to their proper target groups.
John Wittesaele, CEO, EMEA, Xaxis
As an industry we are seeing a growing consensus that traditional measurement metrics such as click-through-rates (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) are out-dated and misleading – making it hard to justify the case for an increase in digital advertising budgets. To ensure advertising is measured effectively and directed towards tangible business objectives, marketers will need to look further into newer measurement techniques, customisation and optimising creativity. Therefore as we look ahead to 2020 and beyond to the next decade, the buzzword will be ‘outcomes’.
By focusing on desired business goals via outcomes, advertising can provide value, which is cost efficient and profitable, all while improving the consumer experience through relevance and personalisation.
