At the same time, however, there aren’t many who are still using it, despite their enthusiasm over it.
Even though there has been a considerable trend toward programmatic online ad purchasing that has continued for several consecutive years, only a limited number of mobile marketing firms have used this media buying strategy, say the results of a new Interactive Advertising Bureau study.
The research was conducted by Ovum and involved the participation of 200 marketing execs.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has now released its report for 2015 which is entitled “Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising”. This was the third annual report of its kind but this time, it included a few additional components that had not been present in the past. In this, mobile marketing firm execs were asked about their opinions and usage of programmatic buying.
Among the mobile marketing executives, 76 percent stated that they found programmatic buying to be important.
Another 41 percent said that they believed that programmatic buying would assist them in being able to reach a certain targeted audience. This is a notably larger figure than the percentage that actually purchased mobile advertising programmatically, which was only 27 percent.
In terms of the respondents who actually purchase programmatic mobile ads that were geared specifically at smartphone users, 18 percent had bought them from private exchanges. Another 17 percent bought from open exchanges. Some of the respondents used both types of exchange.
According to the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence senior director, Joe Laszlo, “It was a little bit of a surprise to us, given the enthusiasm for buying mobile programmatically, that relatively few marketers are actually doing it today.” He explained that one of the primary reasons that these marketers are not investing into programmatic ad buying is that there isn’t a broad range of different automated ad formats that can be purchased. The most popular ad type to buy in mobile programmatic is banner ads, and those don’t have very much draw to creative advertisers. To encourage greater purchasing, marketers need to be able to select from a greater range of options including video and rich media.
