The Ballooning Of Programmatic

media postJoe Mantese RTBlog: I love word balloons. You know, those graphics that display words in various sizes based on how much people think about them. So when the team at Perceptions Group passed along some fresh data from their Programmatic Advertising Report, my eye was immediately drawn to the biggest word on the graphic: “Display.” That’s the No. 1 open-ended response people use to describe the programmatic marketplace, and it makes sense, because the thing that it has mainly been organizing — or reorganizing, as the case may be — is the online display advertising marketplace.

The second biggest word, is the thing that’s been organizing it the most — data. Without it, the machines and people who trade programmatically — either via Open RTB or private exchanges — wouldn’t know what to bid on.

The only weight that surprises me in the infographic, is the one given to the word “audience,” which is on the point size-challenged side of the word balloon’s font spectrum. I find that surprising, because the most significant thing about the shift to programmatic-buying, is that it really represents the shift from media-buying to “audience-buying.” But I guess people still think of it in terms of media inventory — you know, online display. Oh well.

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