Dive Brief:
- Ad tech firm Turn surveyed more than 200 creatives in the UK and found that only 59% of respondents from large agencies reported ever having worked on programmatic
- Perhaps more surprising: 11% of respondents from small agencies reported feeling confident they even understood what programmatic meant, according to Adweek.
- 35% of surveyed creatives said they are not getting the data they need from brands while 29% said they're not getting the data media planning agencies have access to.
Dive Insight:
As it turns out, there's still a lot of confusion in the advertising world over programmatic. (If you don't understand it yet, we recommend reading this primer on programmatic advertising.)
This fundamental lack of understanding should be a concern for agencies, as eMarketer research found that programmatic will account for 67% of display ad spending in the U.S. market this year. A study from last fall conducted by Circle Research found 63% of respondents reported that having working knowledge of programmatic ads will be a crucial advantage by 2020. At the same time, 44% reported having little, or no, understanding of how programmatic works.
"I kept on coming up against this issue where there was a feeling with brands that perhaps creatives didn't understand the role of programmatic, the value of real-time data and how it could help or enhance the end-game of user experience," Richard Robinson, Turn's managing director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, explained to Adweek about the impetus for the study. "It just cries out to me that there is a training gap, a skills gap and a knowledge and understanding gap."
Given the importance of data in today’s marketing world, any disconnect between brands and agencies on data is an issue that should be solved by both parties. But Turn’s results, particularly with regards to programmatic, aren’t out of line with previous research.
Data management in particular is a challenge for many marketers. The CMO Council reported that only 30% of marketers feel they are handling the data aspect of marketing well.
"This is a cry for help from the marketing community," Neil O'Keefe, svp of CRM and member engagement at the DMA, explained to Marketing Dive. "This is the future of marketing and the future is now. More marketers are searching our education to better train existing staff and DMA hears from hiring managers that more and more their target hire is a data scientist and not a marketer."