PETALING JAYA: Holistic strategies are needed to ensure digital or programmatic advertising is able to efficiently meet advertisers needs.

       In the digital age, analysts say programmatic advertising is here to stay and sufficient protection for advertisers should be put in place like fraud detection and other sophisticated tracking systems.

       This is to avoid the diversion of ads to different platforms and at the same time, to help advertisers know who they are buying the ads from, they added.

       Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of online advertising space. Programmatic ad buying refers to the use of software to buy digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves request for vendor proposal, human negotiations and manual insertion orders.

       The recent case of Gannett in the United States is food for thought about programmatic advertising. But it should be noted that this does not put a blanket “ruling or opinion” on such advertising.

       According to independent researcher Braedon Vickers, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, for nine months USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, had apparently sent billions of ads to the wrong places.

       Advertisers who thought they were paying for advertising on the USA Today news site instead had their ads appear in places like Gannett’s Lebanon (PA) Daily News.

       Commenting on the Gannett case, Media Specialists Association (MSA) president, who is also GroupM Malaysia’s CEO, Chanchal Chakrabarty told StarBiz that the publisher (USA Today) had admitted its mistake and had indicated that it was “human error”.

       He added the error was mainly on third-party programmatic exchanges and it did not impact direct sold digital advertising or direct sold programmatic campaigns.

       Having said that, he said there were programmatic advertising strategies and initiatives that were available and implemented to minimise such recurrence.

       “We have been implementing many of these strategies for our clients for years, including working with publishers directly via programmatic guarantees and private marketplaces.

       “The agency also works with verification partners that have the technology to identify domain mismatches to avoid problems like the Gannett issue.

       “Apart from this, the agency works closely with all partners and has contracts that cover areas of ad fraud, brand safety, viewability and delivery to ensure clients have protection in cases like Gannett,” he noted.

       As technology was continuously evolving, Chanchal said it’s important to always keep abreast of what was available and work closely with partners in the ecosystem to learn, train and implement the latest technology.

       He said there also need to have strong internal processes to ensure measures and steps are applied along the whole supply chain.

       At GroupM level in Asia-Pacific including Malaysia, he said the agency has implemented a number of key initiatives in the supply chain like supply path optimisation, inclusion lists, direct publisher programmatic buying, and whitelisting etc. This is to provide clients sufficient protection on brand safety, ad fraud and campaign viewability, he said.

       Whitelisting is a process that helps in narrowing down the Internet protocol and email addresses that can reach a person or to his or her website.

       Referring to the Gannett incident, an industry observer said : You don’t just kill a platform (programmatic) merely because it’s not seen as transparent. Ad fraud also happens in traditional media as well.

       “Traditional media only builds awareness after a prolonged campaign and involves huge monies. Programmatic brings us straight to the consumer, knowing how they behave and what mindset at each consideration journey 24 by seven. This is powerful, as every money invested is a potential for sales conversion.

       “Processes need to be improved when coming to programmatic advertising . Each party within the ecosystem has to be accountable to ensure the data source is neutral and accurate. There should be a system audit time table in place to constantly check each step of the process either during human intervention or machine learning stage. This is currently lacking.“MSA or Malaysian Digital Association together with media owners need to join forces to educate clients on proper expectations in programmatic advertising.

       Taking a broader view, ad industry veteran Datuk Johnny Mun said the use of digital advertising as a medium has to be employed within reason and in moderation.

       Mun, who is senior adviser to the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents and Oxygen Advertising managing director, added that programmatic should never be used as a free-for-all and a can-do-it-all platform.

       “Tracking digital results is a handful, vis-à-vis traditional media such as TV or print where logs actually validate ad appearances as per scheduled plans.

       “There is no denying that digital advertising is an integral part of the communications industry today. And programmatic advertising is purposed to be more efficient, by cutting out the middleman and shortening the process for advertisers, to reach intended targets.

       “However, there must not be total reliance on digital media to do it all. Any marketer knows that to have a symbiotic relationship with their targets, the success of their communication relies strongly on a relevant and comprehensive media mix,” Mun added.

       He said digitalisation is here to stay and it should serve its purpose in our daily lives, and in this case, in brand communications.

       He said marketers too should have the good sense to evaluate the need and efficiency of this medium before diving in blindly just because the digital medium purportedly is a wonder–inducing platform.

       Mun noted: “At the end of the day, it is still the original that feeds the artificial. Food for thought”.