Alix's Weekly Programmatic Industry News Updates

Hello there.

It is Thursday already and you cannot WAIT to relax during the weekend. In case someone asks you about Programmatic Land (you never know), here are a few bits of news on the subject - catch up in just a few minutes with the below.

Now get that hot chocolate and start reading!

ENJOY! 

In the news this week: Adblock Plus and Facebook are playing cat and mouse (seriously), Lidl thinks programmatic is like Meryl Streep, Pernod Ricard is bringing programmatic in-house, Fashion and Beauty brands are using AI, what's the state of mobile programmatic today, and the latest big wins from big agencies.

Adblock Plus claims to be defeating Facebook by blocking adverts on the social network - Read here 

• Adblock Plus claims they've been working on a fix to let Facebook users block ads on the social network and therefore outfoxing Facebook's attempt to hide the ads on their site so adblockers can't block them 
• Eventually, Facebook will figure out a way to outfox Adblock's outfoxing and bring a fix to their fix 
• That's a lot of foxes, but sure. Guess we'll know more after a while! 

ROI is better with press, TV and radio advertising according to Lidl - Read here 

• Programmatic is OVERRATED. Like Meryl Streep according to certain people. 

• By that they mean they don't want to invest in programmatic, despite their advertising budget growing consistently year on year, because they think programmatic is unreliable and doesn't make a good ROI. 
• And they are not interested in bringing programmatic in-house either (due to the headcount) 
• In conclusion, programmatic is "new, shiny, and overrated". 

Pernod Ricard on the contrary is bringing programmatic in-house! Read here

• Pernod Ricard invests 60% of its media spend in digital advertising and sees programmatic as a way to improve efficiency and better target consumers 
• The company is looking to save €200m by 2020 and their approach is to save money by buying more digital advertising programmatically and creating more content in-house. 
• They're also very conscious of brand safety and wish to appear next to appropriate content

Fashion and beauty brands are using AI to drive mobile purchases - Read here 

• Why? Because mobile represents 50% of their traffic... But not their revenue 
• The brand Diane von Furstenberg had its site entirely transformed last year as well as its mobile navigation - Working with personalization platform Qubit, DvF set up an algorithm-based discovery feed on its mobile site that’s curated using artificial intelligence and tailored to each user. Through data culled by the brand and Qubit, the feed reflects an assortment that changes, depending on how a visitor has shopped in the past.
• The goal is to use AI to build a personalized product feed that will make the discovery process on the mobile web easier
• The thinking behind all this is: Brands won’t be building out new apps anytime soon. But if you can experience a brand through other apps like Instagram or YouTube, then go and shop a feed that knows not only if you came from an app but what people like you are shopping, then people will shop. 

Stat of the Week 

• 41% of marketers are still intimidated by mobile programmatic, even though mobile advertising accounts for 50% of digital advertising - read here.  

Highlights & Whispers 

• Agenda21 Digital just won a few other clients, including Addison Lee, Le Col, Hachette and AJ Bell. Read here. 
• Vizeum retains BMW Group media account in Australia - see more here. And Vizeum is on fire as it has also won Ab InBev (brewing giant) which represents about $1bn in the US! More info over here. 

Have a great week everyone!

Alix