Programmatic adoption by APAC marketers on the rise: MediaMath

The study revealed that the most mature markets in the region, in terms of the percentage of marketers using programmtic buying, are Australia (48 percent), Japan (46 percent) and Singapore (46 percent).

Of these, 82 percent are either satisfied or highly satisfied with their investment in programmatic technology, indicating that marketers are benefiting and getting returns from their programmatic adoption.

The study also found that 96 percent of these adopters plan to continue investing in programmatic technology in the next 24 months.

“It is encouraging to learn that marketers are increasingly understanding the larger business benefits of using programmatic marketing as an underpinning technology layer to achieve their marketing goals,” Rahul Vasudev, Asia-Pacific managing director of MediaMath, said in a statement.

Global programmatic adspend is expected to reach US$37 billion by 2019, according to Magna Global, and the APAC region is poised to play a significant role in this growth.

While several markets in the APAC region have been seen as laggards in terms of marketing technology adoption, it remains a high-growth region, with a large number of businesses yet to adopt or integrate programmatic advertising into their marketing mix.

Overall, 48 percent of marketers surveyed who have not adopted programmatic indicated that they are either planning to or are currently in the evaluation stage.

On country level, the survey also showed that more than half of marketers in the less mature countries, such as India (52 percent), Malaysia (58 percent), and Indonesia (56 percent), are either planning to adopt or are currently evaluating whether to adopt programmatic buying.

Forrester Consulting noted that this is a "promising indicator" of the extent of programmatic awareness across the region.

Through the survey, APAC marketers cited the following benefits of programmtic as the most important:

• Better contextual targeting
• Faster and more efficient execution
• Real-time optimisation.

As for key barriers to programmatic adoption, marketers cite these as top factors:

• A lack of time to understand and implement programmatic
• Lack of programmatic skills
• The complexity of the technical implementation
• Not having an agency partner that can help them use programmatic.

Vasudev said that marketers have valid concerns when it comes to programmatic adoption, and need to leverage capable and skilled agency and technology partners who can help “set them on a path to excellence in programmatic.”

“A large obstacle is internal education, so it is imperative that marketers invest in formal programmatic education for themselves to enable themselves to reap the benefits that successful programmatic practices deliver,” he added.

The report, “Programmatic: The Shifting Paradigm Of Digital Marketing” surveyed 300 senior marketing decision-makers in Australia, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in February.

Survey respondents were mostly from business-to-consumer (B2C) companies with annual revenues in excess of US$25 million.