As anyone who reads my research knows, I am the resident display ad technology geek on the Interactive Marketing team. I am fascinated by all things acronym-related, from DSPs to DMPs to RTB. And my experience co-launching Razorfish’s “agency trading desk,” ATOM Systems, in 2008 taught me a lot about what matters — and what doesn’t — in rolling out an audience-centric programmatic buying strategy, and what steps to take to set clients up for success.

Well, I thought it was time to share this story in my new report, The Future Of Digital Media Buying. It explores how digital media buying is dramatically transforming and outlines the steps marketers must take to succeed in this new digital media buying world.

The long and short: laser-focused, programmatic media buying is now a reality and that’s a good thing for you. Here’s what’s driving the opportunity:

I’ve been given the privilege of traveling to Singapore this week to participate in an Audience Targeting Summit being presented by Microsoft. As audience targeting is a subject that's near and dear to my heart (see The Audience Targeting Imperative), I’m very excited to have been asked by Microsoft to participate. 

I’m also excited to experience such an interesting non-US market firsthand. I’m already learning a great deal about the unique challenges and obstacles faced by marketers and agencies in the Asia Pac region. For instance, creating a cohesive, multichannel digital marketing campaign when you’re trying to coordinate efforts across a handful of countries, all with different languages, processes and rules is really challenging.  (One great place to start, I was told -- and I couldn’t agree more -- is to focus on creating a baseline level of continuity in measurement through the rollout of a common set of metrics and definitions).

On that note, I’ll be extremely interested to learn more about the audience targeting landscape here -- and its accompanying challenges and opportunities -- at the Microsoft event this Friday.

In the meantime, I’ll keep my ear to the ground for other interesting insights that I can share with the Forrester Interactive Marketing community!

--Joanna

I’ve spent the last 10 years, on and off, representing the buy side of the display marketing equation.  For many years I held the post of Media Supervisor at digital marketing leader Razorfish, managing the display efforts for a Fortune 500 financial services brand.  I co-founded, and successfully ramped, the “agency trading desk”, ATOM Systems, for my agency.  And I worked within Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center as an educator and advocate for the in-house audience buying solution, Audience on Demand, as AOD’s head of Brand Relations. 

Never did I really get a chance to take a step back and contemplate the big picture – What are publishers struggling with in this rapidly changing ecosystem?  How do the different point solutions (many of them technology based, these days) fit together… or not? What are the challenges that digital marketers are facing in their (often uphill) battle to grow digital’s share of spend, and what are some solutions?  Taking off my buy-side hat and taking a step back, as the newest member of Forrester’s Interactive Marketing group, offers a welcome change in viewpoint! 

 My experience over the last few years, however, does give me a unique point of view - I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about how the modes of acquiring, optimizing, reporting on and deriving insight from display media are going through a dramatic shift.  This shift is a direct result of the rise of ad exchanges like Yahoo!’s RMX and Google's ADX, Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) like Invite Media and MediaMath, data marketplaces like BlueKai, and more.  I strongly believe that we’re at an inflection point in how a significant portion of Display media will be managed – and by whom - going forward, and I personally look forward to sharing my perspective on it with this community.