A programmatic trading event was organized by BBC in Dubai which had many advertising professionals and clients of the global television broadcaster participating who discussed on the changes seen in programmatic in the region.
Several key points was highlighted during the session where BBC’s Programmatic Trading Manager, David Goddard presented statistical evidence to show that programmatic has emerged to comprise $14.7 billion of projected global digital display ad spends in 2015. This figure is expected to more than triple to $55.3 billion by 2017, representing 59% of all display ads.
Also, one of the speakers was PHD Dubai’s General Manager Luca Allam who was invited to participate in a panel discussion on how the display advertising market is changing in the region.
“Agencies have a lot more information at their disposal today. In the past, there was no real uniqueness in what agencies were doing; all of them were buying the same thing. Now, we’re acting more like a network in our agencies, because we have more data to leverage,” commented Mr Allam.
When discussing the current state of programmatic in the region, Mr Allam added, “Programmatic does have a place, but there is still room for everything else as well, especially in this market where we value people relationships. However, what is key is getting that synergy across devices, such as including mobile.”
The discussion also brought out the question, whether the use of programmatic for TV, radio and outdoor will work in this region.
“In this region, we love technology. Just look at the video consumption and smartphone penetration behaviour here. We have a complex about wanting to have the latest technology available here first. We are already having conversations with clients about programmatic TV, so there’s definitely an attitude here that ‘if we can do it, we will’,” said Mr Allam.
