WTF is Fixed Point Programmatic?

00:02:15 · Dan LardenPlay from here

[00:02:15] S2: Yeah sure, so I mean the very first time I got involved was probably, think it was about 2018, so it was very early on. At the time I was working for a digital agency called Infectious Media and we were slightly different than we had our own DSP. And one day we had a very interesting meeting with a supply side out of home company who said, 'hey, I think we can integrate into your bidder. And at first we thought, well, this is a bit nuts. We'd only ever done programmatic display and social and obviously smaller formats and things. So we gave it a go essentially thinking back to that time, we kind of had three stakeholders to convince, I guess, that we could do this. So we had the sort of supply side and then we had the internal team. We had to actually convince the business that this was something worth building. Then we had the client side, so obviously we had to go and try and make sure that the clients were going to buy after we'd done the work to integrate. So it was quite an interesting time. By far the easiest part was getting the supply side adopted because there were quite a lot of people on the supply side who were very interested in giving this a go and that was obviously publishers within the Out-of-Home who had smaller sales teams and were kind of looking for ways to actually increase demand for their inventory, but also that then people like yourself who were representing the larger publishers as well who were kind of willing to give this new way of buying a punt. And then the internal stakeholders to try and just make sure that we could build this and get it built, again, didn't take too much convincing, luckily, because we were quite an innovative agency and our founders were always interested in testing new things. The hardest bit was the client side, for sure. Thinking back, our clients at the time were heads of programmatic and performance and people that had predominantly just again done sort of search and social and programmatic. And when we put it to them that we could buy out of home in a programmatic way, again, they were convinced. But then we had this problem of the fact that our home was always bought in the same way for them and the company. And actually, so this client we're actually talking about is John Lewis, was our client at the time, who we eventually ended up running the first campaign with.

00:05:04 · Dan Larden, S1Play from here

But yeah, that was by far the hardest stakeholder to convince and I think back then, thinking back, we kind of overcome these technical hurdles but actually it was almost the commercial hurdles within the client and actually getting the campaign which was the hardest piece actually. [00:05:24] S1: Yeah I think that would resonate with anyone who works in an emerging programmatic channel is the tech is one thing but the people and the structure and the teams is something completely different and bringing people along on that journey is critically important. I think what I enjoyed most from your answer there Dan was actually when you described the absolute fundamentals of my career as giving this new way of buying a punt. So I'm gonna add that to my CV or my LinkedIn profile, I think, day to day. Just taking that one step further, I obviously remember that campaign with a lot of kind of love and we worked on it and it was very worthwhile and worthy and new and exciting at the time but obviously things have evolved since then and I'm thinking back to I guess last year where we ran a campaign together I think to launch some of the TPA Academy work that we've done. I wonder if you could share with us how that experience varied from that first campaign to the campaign that we ran together last year.

00:06:23 · Dan LardenPlay from here

[00:06:23] S2: Yeah, I mean it couldn't have been more different, could it? Mean, yeah, so five years ago, again, were first through the gate, got the bloody nose for sure. I think there was a lot of testing going on. There was a lot of uncertainty on the buy side of how do we set this campaign up, what creatives do we use, how do we optimise this, how do we plan it, how can we incorporate the data into our existing digital campaigns. All of these things were sort of the first time that we'd done it. So although it was quite exciting, often problems come. And we were talking just before this around just simple integration pieces, overcoming how do I incorporate root data into the bid stream. These sorts of challenges meant that we were stopped starting and campaigns got delayed for sure. And again, on top of the issues that we had in terms of the client trying to get budgets signed off for this new way of doing out of home. And then I think fast forward to last year when we ran this test with you, and it was I I couldn't believe how much it changed actually and how much easier it was because all of those problems have almost been, over five years, been ironed out for sure. So now the thing that surprised me the most was when we ran the campaign, it was just how quickly and easily we could determine the availability of ads, the out of home screens. Very quick to do the planning piece. The creative tracking that we did, I think it took a week maybe even less than that, think. And that's including the build, wasn't it? And then getting it traffic to the DSP and getting everything signed off on your side. So yeah, I think everything from just the technical piece and then obviously then just all of the bits that you need to run a campaign in terms of that trafficking and setup piece really surprised me. And then getting hold of the data as well to do our analysis was pretty simple as well and easy to do. So I think for sure all of the headaches that we had five years ago, you know, fast forward today, it's certainly benign now into a much smoother process to just get creatives built and done and activated.

00:08:45 · Dan Larden, S1Play from here

But what's exciting isn't it, what's exciting still is that even all that's been ironed out in terms of the bit that you would expect to be ironed out, but the use cases are still coming thick and fast into how do you actually then use that as a brand and as a marketer to the best of your ability, that is still an area which I think is still moving forward isn't it? [00:09:09] S1: Yeah it makes me think about the kind of traditional crawl, walk, run life cycle and kind of where we are on that journey. I think even if I would try and answer that I couldn't give you a firm answer, don't think we're running yet or what I'd say we're definitely not running yet but are we between crawl and walk or between walk and run? I don't know and I think one of the things that's evolving in this space and it's really interesting certainly for media purists is what is the media theory behind all of this and then how is it applied and how is it proving itself to be true or not. And I know again talking to you before this session today, we've talked about the concept of I believe what you're calling fixed point programmatic. So I just kind of want, we'd like you to kind of explain what that is Dan for the people listening into this and what this concept that have named we should call it the Dan Larden fixed point programmatic I think.

00:10:04 · Dan LardenPlay from here

[00:10:04] S2: I mean I've come up with the term just because I don't think anything else exists for it and it's something that should exist but it's essentially and if anyone else is you know maybe there's a term I just haven't heard of it yet so very happy to not be the term fixed point programmatic. But essentially I think what we're talking about here is that we now have the ability to buy a placement that never moves in a real time programmatic way and that placement is potentially going to be seen by more than one person. I think that programmatic out of home was the first time that actually happened because before we were within programmatic and within auditable, we were pretty much talking about a placement of an ad that was probably going to be seen by one person maximum. So you think about connected TV, which is bought in the same way, similar way, out of home placements and potentially digital radio, So we're talking about being able to buy these very static devices or static screens, which again don't move. Know the fixed point. And obviously previously we've kind of had, you you could argue we'd have desktops and desktops didn't move, but actually people have laptops now and laptops move around and mobile phones move around and that's where predominantly that's where social is bought on those screens. So you know we're talking about within Programmatic for a long time, talking about not really talking about location, talking about user. But now we have this ability to be able to talk about a very specific fixed point and this very specific screen which you know exists, which you can go and check on Google Maps. And obviously with connected TV, you're talking about a fixed screen in the home. So I think what the term fixed point programmatic, I think just is it defines that. But again, it talks to the opportunity that you can have as a brand now to be able to be in a very granular way, buy that very fixed placement and then start to do really interesting uplift studies when you know that you have bought advertisement in those fixed places. And I think that's really exciting. And I think that's a huge opportunity, which is very much untapped for quite a lot of brands.

00:12:28 · Dan Larden, S1Play from here

I think quite a lot of brands probably haven't got their head around the fact that they can get a huge amount of data in terms of where they can buy and then where they have bought and exactly what crates have been shown and with an idea of who's seen it. And I think that whole premise is still just almost like make its way into the planning process. And that's the kind of the definition which I'm talking about. [00:12:56] S1: Can you bring that to life a little bit Dan and kind of really go into what is that or maybe some real examples of what that opportunity is that's being presented, and I guess also what challenges that solves potentially?