33Across Blog | Programmatic News & Trends

For years, the digital advertising industry settled into a predictable pattern. Let’s call it SBLR for short: Soul Searching, Big Speech (typically at the IAB or ANA annual meeting), Little Industry Action, Repeat. Not much progress was made toward cleaning-up programmatic advertising or even defining what “cleaning-up” actually meant.  

This year’s DMEXCO event in Cologne, Germany was particular interesting. There was a heatwave in September and a huge turnout from the global digital marketing and advertising community to discuss trends, concerns and general state-of-industry.  

Sheer Size
DMEXCO reflects that both the digital marketing and advertising technology industries are alive and well. I was stunned with how large and globally diverse the industry has grown. Much bigger than it seemed last year, itseemed impossible to reach everyone I wanted to see in 2 days. With so many exhibitors and attendees, I wouldn’t be surprised if another day is added for next year.  
 
Publisher Power
DMEXCO was a great opportunity to meet with new and existing partners, all in one place. In speaking with partners at DEMCXO, many seem to be going through an auditing phase, vetting advertisers that are not consistently performing while also onboard those that they feel confident will perform.

Big Mobile
Mobile seemed to be the most important area of interest and growth this year, it is definitely the way. Almost everyone's traffic is now coming more from mobile than desktop.  

Thinking global, locally. 
Transparency, viewability, page speed and latency are the main focuses in the US while the rest of the world has a concern with ad blocking. While some global companies have made significant pan-European traction, much of their business is still transacted locally and with in-country experts - as is the case with Germany.

It’s all about balance
Walking 7 miles a day in Cologne makes it completely ok to live on beer and bratwursts for a few days.

It was hard not to miss Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends Report, especially the section on economic growth slowing. On the one hand, the report did call out that U.S. internet advertising growth is accelerating. Furthering that point, less than a month before Meeker’s findings were released, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that U.S. internet ad revenues hit a landmark $59.6 billion in 2015, marking six consecutive years of growth. Internet advertising isn’t showing signs of slowing, especially given the meteoric rise in mobile and video, and the overall market segment is estimated to reach $100 billion by 2020, according to Technology Business Research.

2015 was a banner year for programmatic marketing. Everywhere you turned, you heard more about the rise of programmatic as well as the problems that came with it: questionable viewability, fraudulent traffic and now today the rise in ad blockers.