P&G set a goal of buying 70% to 75% of its digital media
programmatically in 2014, according to people familiar with the
matter, though it hasn't confirmed that, and Mr. Franzer didn't
address the programmatic share of P&G digital buying. But he
said after a big run up in programmatic digital buying in recent
years, some obstacles make further expansion harder.
"At P&G for the past three or four years you have seen
brands double year over year their amount of video they're
purchasing," Mr. Franzer said. "We're actually at a point now where
video is scarce," though other formats, such as banners are
plentiful, even with much inventory having been wiped out by higher
viewability standards.
The video scarcity applies "more for the short-form stuff,"
which Mr. Franzer defined as five to 15 seconds. "For long-form
there is definitely still a play," he said.
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Other factors also limit how much deeper P&G can get into
digital right now, Mr. Franzer said, such as lack of an industry
standard for viewability on mobile devices. The Media Rating
Council is expected to propose standards for mobile viewability
soon.
And while P&G sees buying programmatically against audiences
on TV-connected devices such as Roku, Chromecast or Apple TV as
intriguing, lack of strong audience measurement is a limitation, he
said.
The majority of P&G's TV dollars will keep going through
network buys and the majority of its video through other digital
avenues with better audience measurement "until that data set
really increases available insight on who you can effectively
target on connected TV," he said.
Mobile is enough of a challenge at this point, with 60% to 65%
of some brands' targets accessing online content primarily through
their mobile devices, Mr. Franzer said. And the company is looking
to solve the riddle of following its target audience (anonymously,
of course) in a cookie-less world across devices.
P&G is "leveraging data" around internet protocol (IP)
addresses, he said. "You can visibly get somebody out of their home
and realize what devices they're on cross screen, and then tie that
back to who they are, where they are at, where they work, and again
gain insight to so much data around what they're using and track
that across screens."
A lesser challenge for P&G is election season, Mr. Franzer
said. But programmatic digital is one area where a big national
advertiser like P&G is affected by the political ad glut even
though it never buys much spot TV or radio.
"I would say it's very similar to Christmas," he said. "Prices
tend to increase a little bit. You have to increase your bids. I
wouldn't say it's significant, but when you're talking millions of
dollars, it's a massive drop in the bucket."
Alec Rivera, VP of programmatic strategy and enablement for
Nielsen Catalina Solutions, speaking on the same panel, also
identified programmatic TV buying and reaching consumers using
TV-connected devices as big opportunities -- and challenges -- for
clients. Nielsen has been in discussions with Adobe among others about improving
audience measurement for programmatic ad buys on connected devices
to permit programmatic buys, but hasn't concluded that yet, he
said.
Nielsen Total Audience Measurement does use the company's TV
ratings panel to deliver ratings across a wide variety of digital
content and devices, but that delivers gross rating points for
broad demographics rather than a view into the individual consumer
profiles necessary for programmatic.
"We have some really good progress in that direction and struck
up a relationship last year with Roku," said Megan Clarken, exec VP
of global product leadership for Nielsen in an interview today.
"Any advertiser who wants their programmatic or dynamically
measured ad delivered through Roku [the service] has the ability to
just turn that on."
Nielsen is looking to extend that service to other
connected-device providers by tagging ads with software, she
said.
~ ~ ~
CORRECTION: An earlier
version of this story identified Scott Franzer as an Omnicom Media
Group associate director, as he did at the AAF's Digital Dialogue
conference. An OMG spokeswoman later said Mr. Franzer is not yet an
employee, but is in the process of being hired.
