Programmatic Advertising and The Death of Editorial Environment

This morning, my wife and I both opened our laptops and over coffee began to read THE NEW YORK TIMES.  She directed me to the top of the masthead where there was a link to a new Cartier commercial  featuring the news that the Hudson Yards location was now open. The 30 second spot was beautifully done and featured the iconic Cartier panther that has been seen in their video work in recent years. I was impressed by the execution but also the wonderful placement. A blue chip, sophisticated and cosmopolitan audience such as that of the Times would be ideal for the Cartier message.

I bring this up as, a few weeks ago, I heard from my most strident critic, a young man who sees me as a supercilious old fart. His comments are sometimes interesting, occasionally valid and often more than a bit mean. He asked why I did not write about Programmatic Advertising more in MR and suggested that I did not even know what it was.

These two separate events have inspired this modest post.

To those of you not currently in the ad game, here is my brief explanation of Programmatic Advertising:

Let us say that you would like to visit Vancouver, British Columbia, one of my favorite places in North America. You compare hotel prices, Air B&B’s and conventional B&B’s, shake your head at the stiff prices and do not book any rooms. Like it or not, you now have a Vancouver cookie on your device. The next morning you log on to check your e-mail or the action in the overseas markets. Your cookies are passed on to an ad exchange. The exchange in the blink of an eye auctions off the information from the cookies to the entity in Vancouver who is most willing to pay for it. The ad of the winner of this instantaneous auction is loaded in to your current web page in a flash.

Is there anything wrong with this? Not really although when shopping I can never get rid of the ad for a novelty tie that I did not want for months! Yet there is one tragic flaw to it for me. Programmatic advertising virtually dismisses quality content. When I was a young pup in the advertising business decades ago, it was drilled in to me that while demographic delivery was important, almost of equal value was the editorial environment that the selected media vehicle provided. More importantly, as marvelous as the Cartier spot was this morning, the environment of THE NEW YORK TIMES counted for a lot as well.

A vehicle that had quality content merited a premium price. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL was great for business advertisers as were FORBES, FORTUNE, AND BUSINESS WEEK. Even in TV, I worked hard and had my teams cherry pick programming that seem to fit the lifestyle or interest of our primary target even though Nielsen gender and age data may have suggested other choices.

With programmatic buying, a quality site such as the Times is not differentiated at times from a tractor pull page or perhaps a very suggestive site.

When we paid a premium for a high quality environment we still thought that it was a good value proposition.

So, to my acerbic young friend, I do see the value of programmatic buying in reaching people efficiently. At the same time, something is lost when quality content takes a back seat or all but disappears.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com