Programmatic gets a lot of stick, most recently becoming the scapegoat for a registered drop in ad viewability. Undertone’s new EMEA managing director Rob Garber explains why he believes this is not the case.

December 2015 was a big month for Garber. Not only did he join Undertone which was promptly acquired by Perion, he also celebrated the birth of a daughter.

Since then, he says a key focus has been integration, whilst looking at the road map of Undertone to see how it can be enhanced by what Perion has to offer: “They’re two very different companies, but when they can be bought together, they can offer some unique solutions.”

One of the most recent solutions to come from the acquisition is Undertone’s Facebook Canvas offering, borne of a partnership with Perion-owned sister company Make Me Reach, which is integrated and accredited by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The partnership enables brands to extend Undertone’s campaigns to social media newsfeeds, retargeting users from publisher sites.

“It’s that sort of glue between publisher sites and social sites,” Garber explains.

In a recent interview with M&M Global, Undertone chief executive officer Corey Ferengul expressed that programmatic has done a “disservice” to advertising, a sentiment that Garber doesn’t entirely agree with.

“I think programmatic is different in the US and the UK, at different advanced stages,” he comments.

“I think there is a bigger penetration of programmatic and automatic buying in the UK than there is in the US and the UK started very direct response (DR) with programmatic conversations about how we bring creative opportunities into the programmatic sphere, because before it was very much real time bidding (RTB).”

US vs UK

Garber feels that the US is currently going through the transition from RTB to branded advertising.

“I would say that creative still needs to be the most important conversation in the programmatic world. It’s being discussed more and more but there’s definitely more we can do, so I wouldn’t put it as graphically, but I would say we can definitely have that conversation to bubble it up.

“Cannes was a great testament to that, people were very much talking about ad tech data and cost efficiencies but they really just wanted to talk about the creative.”

But, Cannes is the festival of creativity, right? “Yes, but I like to look at it glass half full!”

For Garber, the creative element of a campaign has always shone through and resonated, such as the emotional connection achieved by Christmas advert campaigns. “I think creative is still something that needs to be worked on more in programmatic, it’s definitely getting the light of day but there’s still more that we can do.”

Agencies vs Publishers

Undertone works with publishers and sells to agencies, and Garber has noticed some big differences in what his diverse clients want.

“I can see a lot more agencies this year being very direct that they want to move a lot of their business programmatic or to automated trading, which has huge amounts of value. It has very much value in terms of cost efficiency, in regards to universal frequency capping, in regards to sequential messaging between devices and all of that.

“I think when you look at publishers, the key thing that I see is that you have sites that are optimised for viewability, and sites which are not optimised for viewability. Programmatic has flattened everything in terms of the publishers you’re going to buy with – you’re basically going to buy an audience, wherever that user is.”

Garber feels that agencies are starting to get squeezed in terms of providing better cost efficiencies and ROI for their clients: “Programmatic allows them to drive down in an RTB environment and we’re not RTB at all, it allows them to drive down the cost efficiency and then that doesn’t really put into context the premium nature of that site.

“I think that’s why we’re starting to see the decline in overall viewability.”

Programmatic to blame?

So is programmatic really to blame for the drop in ad viewability?

“I personally see the complete opposite.” Garber says Undertone’s viewability stats are between 76-80%.

“We work with a select few publishers, about 350 publishers, and every single one has been vetted for viewability, ad clutter and load times. Because our ad formats are inherently viewable because they are a larger canvas size, we are seeing the complete opposite – we’re seeing our viewability numbers go up rather than go down.”

Garber thinks there are two different worlds in the programmatic space – the RTB space vs a private marketplace (PMP) or a deal ID, the space in which Undertone operates, which he says is actually providing higher viewability metrics.

“I think the problem is you’re bundling for the 46% that is viewable – that’s bundling everything. If you start slicing that data up, you start getting some really impressive stories out of it.

“I think you’ll see that across high impact, probably across video pre-roll and adhesion units like sticky ads that scroll with the user. I think RTB is probably driving down the viewability.”

Looking to the future, Garber thinks that the increase in brand budget being moved into programmatic will continue, with programmatic TV taking more of a macro scale.

“Anything that’s digital signage could have programmatic elements or automated trading in it,” he adds, “but I think the biggest thing is going to be the creative conversation.”

Although Garber thinks creative is still key, he says it hasn’t been acted upon as well as it could be.

“On top of that, once you’ve got data, you’ve got the ability to automate your inventory, you can then start playing with dynamic creative optimisation. That is what I see as the biggest opportunity and something that we’re working with,” he adds, describing a campaign that would use an ice cream image on hot days but change the creative dynamically to reflect a change in the weather.

“I think dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) is going to be the big driver as to why brand budget and creative will be discussed in the same breath as programmatic,” he concludes.