Dive Brief:
- As display ads move away from Flash to HTML5, many marketers are willing to spend more on creative programmatic ads, according to Ad Week.
- HTML5 ads have higher deliverability rates on desktop and mobile devices, so marketers are finding creative programmatic ads that are targeted and personalized to be worth their while.
- Some notable examples of the trend are that Amazon has shifted to HTML5-only promos, while Google has dropped autoplaying Flash ads in Chrome.
Dive Insight:
"With Flash, you could have 10 different creatives with 10 different ways, so you'd have in the order of magnitude of about 100 different versions of the ad," Scott Cunningham, SVP at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and general manager of the IAB Tech Lab, told Ad Week, explaining the difference between Flash and HTML5 programmatic. "With HTML5, you are breaking apart the creative assets. Therefore, you can dynamically insert different content for different targets and parameters. And that's more cost-effective to produce."
This improved personalization and targeting with creative programmatic ads is attracting interest from investors in ad tech companies. For example, creative programmatic startup PaperG has recently picked up publishing clients including Hearst, Charter Media and Tribune and announced a fundraising round of $5 million.
Another ad tech company benefitting from the trend is Spongecell, which runs targeted programmatic ads for Coles, an Australian supermarket chain, and places an amazing 80 quintillion (the number one followed by 18 zeroes) different programmatic ads weekly. Programmatic is expected to grow from a $15 billion business in 2015 to $27 billion in 2017, according to eMarketer.