In keeping with an ongoing tradition, a few industry players gave us their take on the year for our annual opinion harvest. Here’s what Kate Thomas, who moved from strategy director of Dynamo to head of communications at Spark, thought about 2014.
Programmatic buying is still just a sliver of the total online ad spend, here and around the world (in New Zealand, it accounted for nine percent or $3 million of the total $31.4 million spent on online display in the last quarter). But it’s getting plenty of column inches and that spend is trending upwards. Most of the big media players have invested in or have access to trading desks and demand side platforms, and many ads for local brands now feature on international sites as a result. But Acquire Online’s Anthony Ord is aiming to get those clients and agencies to support local publishers a bit more by creating a list of 156 different Kiwi sites that have offered inventory as part of a network buy.
How does the media industry reconcile the age of programmatic buying with a strategic, long-term view of effectiveness? By setting appropriate goals—and not eating the marshmallows—writes Kate Thomas.