Last month I wrote an article titled, "What the heck does 'programmatic' mean?" The response was pretty phenomenal, and it became apparent that there is much more to be said on this topic. In this article, I'll flesh out a few of the concepts from the original column and dig into new issues, including commonly believed myths, surrounding programmatic buying.
As in my last article, let me start out with a broad definition of "programmatic" buying and selling. I would define it as any method of buying or selling media that enables a buyer to complete a media buy and have it go live, all without human intervention from a seller.
Programmatic buying is a superset of exchange, real-time bidding, auction, and other types of automated media buying and selling that have mainly been proven out for remnant ad inventory clearing mechanisms up until today. So, while an auction might or might not be involved in programmatic buying and selling, the roots and infrastructure behind the new programmatic world is based on the same infrastructure that the ad exchanges, demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, and ad servers have been plumbing and re-plumbing over the last five years.
Let's take a look at some of the most common and widely believed myths regarding programmatic buying and its current and future role in our industry.
