BRUNA GIL
Programmatic Operations Lead, EMEA, LinkedIn
PROGRAMMATIC
What was the biggest motivator leading to LinkedIn’s adoption of programmatic marketing?
BG: We believe that programmatic has reached a tipping point in adoption levels, particularly for B2B marketing. We also believe it’s reached a tipping point in terms of the shift from quantity to quality. According to the IAB,
programmatic buying accounted for 72 per cent of display advertising in 2016. Given these adoption levels, making LinkedIn’s display ad inventory available programmatically was a natural step in making it simpler and easier for our customers to advertise on LinkedIn.
Many brands are taking their programmatic buying in-house. What are your thoughts on that trend?
BG: When all of the programmatic knowledge sits outside your business in a media agency or ad trading desk, it’s hard to interrogate exactly what’s being spent and what’s being bought – and hard to make informed decisions about whether your investment is really delivering against your objectives. That’s why many marketers are investing in building knowledge and understanding of programmatic internally. The irony is that once you have that expertise, you actually have less need to manage the details of programmatic buying
with target audiences, at scale.”
It’s no coincidence that we launched our offering in 2016, when the programmatic industry was in the middle of the shift back to quality. As the world’s leading B2B publishing platform, where you can reach the world’s professionals all in one place, we felt we had a lot to offer in this area. Our programmatic capabilities harness the huge wealth of data we have on our members, meaning marketers can much more easily connect with target audiences at scale. No other platforms offer such granularity on the data provided. By 2017, we were so convinced by the results of programmatic buying on LinkedIn that we decided to make display ads on LinkedIn 100 per cent programmatic.
Our programmatic capabilities harness the huge wealth of data we have on our members, meaning marketers can more easily connect
in-house. Hiring people who are fluent in
programmatic and understand the strategic considerations involved is not an easy task. You’re looking for a particular breed of hybrid marketer: people with the ability to work with data, who understand the different technology platforms involved, but who also have a strategic marketing sensibility that matches all this to your objectives. Once you have this strategic
knowledge, you can more confidently rely on media agencies and partners to handle programmatic execution. That’s why I believe that many businesses will find themselves with a happy hybrid model. They no longer feel they have to take care of programmatic themselves, because they have the knowledge to have more informed discussions with their programmatic partners.
What sort of questions should advertisers be asking of their vendors to ensure transparency and maintain brand integrity?
BG: It’s not enough to know how much you paid for how many clicks or impressions. Marketers need to be confident demanding answers to the following three questions:
● Where the impressions happened ● What audiences they happened amongst
● How much the impressions were really worth.
Most marketers would be willing to pay more for impressions that they can be confident are from human beings – and the right kind of human beings at that. Impressions and clicks are both worth far more if you know they will deliver meaningful leads – and revenue-driving conversions. Marketers can only get that
confidence from being able to peer into the programmatic black box and see what’s going on. Any programmatic partner worth its salt should be helping them to do that. Everyone should have an interest in clear discussions about what a business’s particular objectives are, which types of impressions they are interested in, and which programmatic buys and media partners are best suited to delivering those impressions. It all helps advertisers benefit from the advantages a good agency or publisher can bring: efficiency, scalability, and expertise. In my view, the best programmatic
partners are those that help to increase programmatic understanding on the part of their clients. They have no interest in blinding them with science.
LinkedIn.com
47 issue 31 spring 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67
