ProgIO 2023 Takeaways

It is a great event to meet with vendors and suppliers in the industry. Overall it’s a learning and connecting experience; you won’t find many (if any) brand leads that are open to new solutions here.

The Big Summary:

Made for Advertising (MFAs) are under fire for not delivering value.

The concept of MFA holds significant weight, yet its definition remains unclear. Consider a scenario where a website is designed for advertising but still garners genuine traffic, the attention received by advertisers cannot be discounted, regardless of the content’s suitability. The question that arises is how to distinguish between MFA and low-quality content, and who holds the authority to determine it. This zone is ambiguous, and hence, major DSPs seek to evade it by abandoning MFA and concentrating on SPO.

Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) points were the most discussed and the basis of a lot of conversations.

MiQ recently performed an audit of their DSP and discovered that they were connected to hundreds of suppliers beyond the originally intended six exchanges. Opting for direct buying from exchanges and publishers is a more straightforward process that eliminates ambiguity and reduces margins. Although MiQ spends a significant portion of their budget with Xandr, they are advocating for SCHAIN reporting capabilities to develop their own SPO decisioning algorithm.

Currently, CTV is leading the SPO conversation and provides a framework for buyers. However, meeting the requirements for direct integration with top SSPs is challenging.

The quality of traffic is poor, and partners who work diligently to clean traffic shaping and reduce bots are more likely to thrive.

DSPs built on tech that’s not theirs will eventually have no one to sell to:

seemed like more of a statement that big brands want suppliers/vendors with their own tech, not borrowed or white-labelled.

The big brands have too much going on in their AdTech stacks that it makes it very hard to report on exactly what’s going on.

Even if they have a great BI tool, some partners have bad APIs, data that does not converge, and lack similar accreditation with measurement partners. Basically, the ideal scenario is 10 max partners across buying, data, reporting, creative, CS, and social listening. DSPs hold onto too much data and it does not cross pollinate very well

Other points:

• Clean data rooms were a huge topic in terms of cross-pollination amongst platforms.
• Retail is going to be more standardised. The sentiment was that a lot of the big players are working together on standard formats and delivery methods.
• AI: The main point was delivered on making sense on inventory and navigating the best paths to grab customer’s attention when intent is the highest
• Audio and CTV are the next big channel, lots of people are trying to control/manage it
• Attention and attention — just like with viewability, this is something that is being prioritised, too.
• Networking: Overall you’re going to meet with the industry’s top suppliers and vendors.