Learnings from Programmatic I/O (SF, 2018): Part 2

As you may or may not know, I currently work in the advertising technology industry (ad tech for short) and have been for almost two years now. Last month, I attended Programmatic I/O – a major industry conference - for the first time. It was stocked full of amazing content and truly amazing food.
 
I’ve developed a Recap that covers a bit of what I learned over two extremely educational days.

For the sake of digestibility, I’ve broken up my Recap into three parts. This second part will focus on the overarching trends I picked up on. In Part 1, I covered new terminology and technology I was introduced to at the conference. You can find Part 1 here. Part 3 will cover session content.

Part 2: Trends
 
The format of the conference included break-out, track-based sessions on Day 1 and a Plenary Program on Day 2. I really enjoyed this approach. The first day provided highly specific content in tracks based on the major players in the ad tech ecosystem and the sessions provided time for Q&A. The second day provided guidance and insight for what’s to come in the industry. Across both days, there were three trends that particularly stood out to me in the sessions I attended.

Let's take a look at those!
 
In-Housing - A major trending topic that I noticed both days was the idea of advertisers "in-housing" their programmatic technology stack. While many of the in-housing conversations were focused specifically on data management tech, there were some conversations that touched on other needs of the advertiser including topics such as creative (i.e. banner ads, videos, etc.) development. Bringing a programmatic operation fully in-house is a major technical undertaking that can be daunting. With this in mind, many of the speakers, especially agency representatives, noted that perhaps a pseudo in-house approach is best where the advertisers can focus on both internal and partner expertise.

Data - Data and a focus on its proper curation, organization, and use was top of mind for numerous presenters. Given the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ad tech players are heightening their focus on audience data in every regard. Discussions ranged from improving how it's collected (permissions, notifications to consumers, etc.) to how it's used (fraud detection, more precise reach, logging, etc.).

Programmatic TV - A third trending topic was Programmatic TV. We as consumers are quickly shifting to a major "on-demand" type of consumption model when it comes to TV-viewing. This provides a great opportunity for advertisers to boost their cross-device efforts (mobile phone <-> tablet <-> connected TV <-> desktop computer <-> etc.). It also provides opportunities for major programming networks and cable providers to jump even deeper into the ad tech world.

What are your thoughts on the trends I noted above? Have you noticed any other major ad tech industry trends? Share them and let's keep the conversation going!

Until next time,
Jewel