Programmatic Advertising Is Ripe with Opportunity, Toyota Says

Eunice Kim – Media Planner / Toyota North America

Programmatic advertising isn’t the shot in the dark it once was—thanks to sophisticated targeting opportunities, it’s now a staple tactic for many advertisers. But the space continues to evolve. Eunice Kim, media planner at Toyota North America, spoke with eMarketer’s Sean Creamer about how changes in programmatic advertising are creating new opportunities for brands.

eMarketer: What changes in the programmatic space have impacted Toyota the most?

Eunice Kim: We’re seeing a couple of changes to programmatic advertising that are impacting us. The first is the continuously evolving landscape of data targeting. There are more measurement points, targeting capabilities and data signals available to advertisers now than ever before, which is great for the industry.

Another change impacting our brand is dynamic creative opportunities. Along with developments in data and targeting, dynamic creative capabilities have become sophisticated. That means we can now tailor our messaging based on who we’re speaking to and bring more personalized content to users at the right time. This capability ties back to people-based marketing—though that term is still more buzzword than reality, we’re increasingly employing people-based strategies.

eMarketer: What challenges still remain in the programmatic space?

Kim: Marketers would like to see some continued improvements in viewability and ad fraud, both of which are holding the industry back. More competition would also be helpful, because there’s currently a big gap between the major players and everyone else. In general, satisfaction with partners like Facebook and Google is high, but the lack of competition is still problematic.

“Marketers would like to see some continued improvements in viewability and ad fraud, both of which are holding the industry back.”

eMarketer: What marketing trends are you keeping an eye on? Do you anticipate any major changes in the coming months?

Kim: One area of interest for us is emotion-based targeting, where we target consumers based on what we know about their personality traits or their emotional state. We’re also thinking about artificial intelligence [AI] from a targeting standpoint. We’ve already tested the waters with AI by partnering with IBM Watson to power ad units that could carry a conversation with a consumer about one of our models, the Prius Prime.

eMarketer: What about in the programmatic space specifically? What trends do you anticipate will affect buyers in the next 12 to 24 months?

Kim: I expect to see publishers continue to open up their inventory to programmatic. There’s a lot of eagerness, which is great for brands. Programmatic advertising perfectly aligns with our research-driven, data-informed approach to marketing. The space is ripe with rich customer opportunities right now, so we look forward to continuing to test the waters.er

Courtesy of eMarketer

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