Dive Brief:
- Adobe announced a self-serve programmatic platform, Adobe Marketing Cloud, as part of its demand side platform (DSP), Adobe Media Optimizer.
- Marketers can now manage display, search and social programmatic channels within the Media Optimizer.
- Speaking on the DSP space in general, a Forrester senior analyst cautioned the marketplace is currently muddled with little differentiation between DSPs.
Dive Insight:
Adobe's self-service technology allows advertisers to automate ad buying for search, display and social media across ad exchanges and media networks from Adobe partners such as Google AdX, Rubicon, Facebook Exchange, OpenX, PubMatic, AppNexus, Microsoft Ad Exchange, AOL and Index Exchange.
"Transparency is key to success in the programmatic world as automation is rapidly defining the buying and selling of digital ads, but advertisers are demanding more real-time insight into campaign spend and ROI, which Adobe is delivering," Justin Merickel, senior director of Advertising Solutions at Adobe, said in a release. "With global programmatic ad spend expected to reach $53 billion by 20181, Adobe is the first company to integrate disparate technologies and deliver programmatic capabilities in a unified platform."
There are industry questions about the DSP space in general. Richard Joyce, senior analyst for Forrester, told AdExchanger, "Right now I’m having a hard time figuring out where the DSPs are differentiating themselves. There will probably will be a time where we start to see the marketing clouds tell a better story about why it’s beneficial to also use the DSP aspect of their offering within the same system, but for now, I don’t think anyone’s buying into it."
These moves in the DSP marketplace come at time when Adobe’s Flash plugin is being phased out by major browsers and under fire from security experts, including Facebook’s chief of security.