Conde Nast: Programmatic is creative, not just remnant

Australia is still in “education” mode when it comes to programmatic trading but we are not far behind the US, Conde Nast’s Alanna Gombert said at Melbourne’s Data Day.

America has only recently pushed the media buying method into brand work and Australia’s programmatic market is “definitely growing”, according to Gombert who is general manager of the publisher’s CatalystDesk team.

CatalystDesk is a small team of seven that operates like a startup, or a consulting group within Conde Nast to help its sales team sell programmatically.

“From the ad exchanges up until now the market has changed dramatically, in the US especially,” Gombert said.

“The US was kind of steeped in direct response and they really didn’t move into brand until this year, or maybe last year at the end of the year.

“Europe actually moved faster into the brand space and they are running way more branding campaigns in the programmatic channels.”

The “biggest misnomer” surrounding programmatic is that it only deals with remnant inventory. “Everyone thinks it is remnant, it is not remnant,” she reiterated.

Pushing creative work through programmatic is “the most important” focus for Gombert’s team this year. “My whole team is doubling down on creative.”

One example she provided of more creative programmatic work was the live-streaming a run way as part of New York Fashion Week (NYFW).

The fashion show was live streamed via Google’s Lightbox Ad format. Click here for more details.

Conde Nast is opening up its recently launched private exchange to the Australian and New Zealand market and Gombert said that while we are in “education mode” she is “encouraged to see a lot of deals coming through”.

“We are getting a lot of telecom deals and different types of deals of that nature first. They are always first movers, which makes sense, but the market is definitely growing here.”

There are numerous definitions of programmatic circling the industry but Gombert said that for Conde Nast “all it means is a way to book inventory”.

Gombert is also chair of the IAB's Programmatic Publishers Task Force in the US and she said they spent hours defining programmatic and what the Group described as its “four discrete” types: Automated Guaranteed, Unreserved Fixed Rate, Invitation-Only Auction and Open Auction. Click here for the definitions.

Despite the confusion surrounding the process Gombert said Conde Nast is even fielding requests for its print assets to be traded programmatically.

“Everyone wants to know if programmatic for print is coming. If anybody here is a vendor who wants to build that let me know,” she told the audience.

ADMA’s Data Day took place in Melbourne on April 7. It moves to Sydney tomorrow, April 10. Click here for more details.

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