WTF is Fixed Point Programmatic??

The demise of the third-party cookie and challenges with identifiers present marketers with an opportunity to re-think how they approach targeting consumers with a greater focus on location and context rather than being laser-focused on user-level data.??

In episode 6 of the Life in Programmatic Digital out of Home, Dom Kozak, Head of Programmatic at JCDecaux UK, is joined by Dan Larden, Chief Strategy Officer at TPA Digital, a true pioneer in the programmatic digital out of home (prDOOH) space and champion of the concept of ‘fixed point programmatic’.

"In 2018, I was working at an agency – Infectious Media – and we had our own demand-side platform (DSP). One day we met with a digital out of home (DOOH) media owner team that wanted to integrate their supply into our bidder. At first, we thought this was a bit nuts as we’d only done programmatic display before, but we gave it a go! With the supply-side on board, we then had to convince our clients to give this new way of buying DOOH a go. This was a bit trickier as, at the time, our clients were mainly Heads of Programmatic - performance people that had predominantly run search, social, and programmatic display campaigns. When we put it to them that we could buy DOOH programmatically they were interested but also needed to convince the rest of the business to test this new, at the time, unconventional way of buying DOOH. The first campaign we ran was for John Lewis – there was a lot of testing and learning, but it worked!??

We ran a campaign last year promoting our Fundamentals of PrDOOH training course and it couldn’t have been more different to that first John Lewis campaign! The challenges we faced with uploading creative and integrating data were not there anymore – I couldn’t believe how much had changed.??

The thing that surprised me the most when we ran the campaign was just how quickly and easily we could determine the availability of ads. From start to finish, it took less than a week - including the creative build and trafficking. All of the headaches that we had five years ago were just not there anymore.??

One of the things I’ve recently started to talk to brands about is the idea of “fixed point programmatic” which is the ability to buy a placement that never moves, I.e. DOOH, connected TV (CTV) ad, and (in some cases) digital radio, in real-time, using programmatic while considering that placement is going to be seen/heard by more than one person. It’s thinking about how to buy ads on static devices or screens. It’s the reverse of how marketers have been thinking since the explosion of cookies and mobile devices where it’s not about location but about the user – now marketers are pivoting back to thinking about location.??

Now we have the ability to be able to talk about a very specific fixed point, and this very specific screen which you know exists, that’s fixed point programmatic. It talks to the opportunity that you can have as a brand now to be able to be very granular in a one-to-many channel which gives you so many measurement options too.??

Many brands haven't got their head around the fact that they can get a huge amount of data into and out of prDOOH – things like precisely where they can buy, which creative has been shown, and with an idea of who's seen it. I think that the whole premise is only just making its way into the planning process now but is the thinking of the future.??

Measurement is becoming harder to do. As a marketer, you’re looking to answer the question of ‘did this multitude of ads, which I've served across all these different channels, have an effect on the outcome I'm trying to drive?’. And then you want to know what was the optimal combination of those ads? The problem is that with the demise of the cookie, this multi-touch attribution has almost disappeared in many cases.?

With fixed point programmatic channels there’s a big opportunity for advertisers to move money away from channels that are hard to measure because of a lack of identifiers and know that they've served specific ads in specific placements and then do uplift studies into the effects they have had on in-store and online sales by location.??

For the majority of people on the demand-side, it’s about taking control of where and how they buy digital media and getting comfortable with emerging channels. From there it’s a case of thinking about how to incorporate programmatic into channels like DOOH and how to make better use of non-programmatic budgets that are perhaps not as measurable as they have been and/or not performing as well as they did in the past with identifiers so readily available.??

The opportunities are there whether you're an advertiser that's working with an agency or buying in-house, the important thing is to find sources of education and discover what opportunities you're missing out on and push for them either internally or through your agency. Be open and honest when you communicate these opportunities and ideas – think realistically about how much budget you can apportion to testing prDOOH and why you want to do it.?"