MediaMath, creator of the TerminalOne Marketing Operating System for digital marketers, today revealed the findings of a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, ‘Programmatic: The Shifting Paradigm Of Digital Marketing‘.
The study, commissioned by MediaMath, found that 41 per cent of senior marketing professionals in Asia Pacific (APAC) have already adopted programmatic buying into their media buying processes, with Australia (48 per cent), Japan (46 per cent) and Singapore (46 per cent) leading as the most mature markets in the region.
Of these, 82 per cent are either satisfied or highly satisfied with their investment in programmatic technology, indicating that marketers are benefiting and getting returns from their programmatic adoption. Furthermore, an exceedingly positive 96 per cent of these adopters plan to continue investing in programmatic technology in the next 24 months.
While several markets in the APAC region have been seen as laggards in terms of marketing technology adoption, it remains a high growth region, with a large number of businesses yet to adopt or integrate programmatic advertising into their marketing mix.
To gauge the appetite and adoption levels for programmatic in APAC, Forrester surveyed 300 senior marketing decision-makers in Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Survey respondents were all from mostly business-to-consumer (B2C) companies with annual revenues in excess of US$25 million.
“Having invested in the APAC region over the past four years, we have seen exponential growth in the adoption of programmatic and this study is testament that APAC marketers are increasingly turning to programmatic buying to support their overall digital marketing strategy,” said Rahul Vasudev, managing director, Asia Pacific, MediaMath.
“It is encouraging to learn that marketers are increasingly understanding the larger business benefits of using programmatic marketing as an underpinning technology layer to achieve their marketing goals. There are healthy signs that programmatic adoption in APAC will only continue to grow and that the noticeable gap in maturity of the various markets is shrinking very fast.”
Overall, 48 per cent of APAC marketers surveyed who have not adopted programmatic indicated that they are either planning to or are currently in the evaluation stage.
On country level, the survey also showed that more than half of marketers in the less mature countries, such as India (52 per cent), Malaysia (58 per cent), and Indonesia (56 per cent), are either planning to adopt or are currently evaluating whether to adopt programmatic buying. This is a promising indicator of the extent of programmatic awareness across the region.
Through the survey, APAC marketers cited better contextual targeting, faster and more efficient execution and real-time optimisation as the most important benefits in considering programmatic in their practice.
As for key barriers to programmatic adoption, marketers cite these as top factors: a lack of time to understand and implement programmatic, lack of programmatic skills, the complexity of the technical implementation and, lastly, not having an agency partner that can help them use programmatic.
“Marketers have very valid concerns when it comes to programmatic adoption,” said Vasudev.
“Marketers need to leverage capable and skilled agency and technology partners who can help set them on a path to excellence in programmatic. A partner with the requisite skills is essential to chart the roadmap for clients looking to leverage this very valuable ecosystem.
“A large obstacle is internal education, so it is imperative that marketers invest in formal programmatic education for themselves to enable themselves to reap the benefits that successful programmatic practices deliver.”
[1] Global programmatic as spend, Magna Global, September 2015
