Everyone is going to lose their jobs thanks to programmatic marketing*. But don’t take my word for it, listen to this beautiful celebrity:

Programmatic buying is the gluten of advertising. Programmatic sales will do the same job you do without wasting seven hours a day on Facebook. You’ll all be bartending at Applebee’s in a few years.
— Jimmy Kimmel

Programmatic Buying is a hot topic right now, and CMOs around the world are scrambling to learn what it means and how they can throw more money at it. It isn’t “wrong” it just isn’t the magic spell everyone wants it to be.

A lot of money will be thrown at Programmatic Marketing over the next 12 months, and on the other end of the tunnel, people will still be looking for another magic spell to solve their problem.

The problem has already been well defined by John Wanamaker,

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

The solution has been around since the beginning of commerce:

1. Build great relationships.
2. Relationships create trust.
3. Trust leads to higher lifetime value and more personal referrals.

Since you probably don’t want to spend three weeks or 10 minutes figuring all of this out, here are some quotations to catch you up to speed.

Programmatic Marketing :

In digital marketing, programmatic marketing campaigns are automatically triggered by any type of event and deployed according to a set of rules applied by software and algorithms.

WTF is Programmatic Advertising? :

Programmatic advertising technology promises to make the ad buying system more efficient, and therefore cheaper, by removing humans from the process wherever possible. Humans get sick, need to sleep and come to work hungover. Machines do not.

The CMO’s Guide to Programmatic Buying: Nine Things Every Advertiser Should Know :

This year the Association of National Advertisers surveyed 153 marketers and found that only 26% of respondents said they knew what programmatic buying is and have actually used it. The other 74% ranged from either being completely oblivious, aware but unclear or in need of education. But even those who use programmatic tools to buy media may not have a firm grasp of what that means.

Still Can’t Figure Out How Programmatic Advertising Works? Watch This Video :

Programmatic for Dummies: Everyone says it’s exploding, but what is it? :

This year, eMarketer predicts that advertisers in the U.S. will spend $3.36 billion on a thing called “real-time bidding,” up from just shy of $2 billion in 2012.

And

Programmatic tools work only as well as the content and targeting that is fed into them. They can create efficiencies in planning and buying, but creative still needs to be strong and, most importantly, relevant to be effective. —Rick Wion, social media director for McDonald’s

Define It — What Is Programmatic Buying? :

The use of technology to automate processes and the use of math to improve results. It is the future of marketing, available now. —Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath

*

I might have exaggerated when I told you that everyone is going to lose their jobs to programmatic marketing. And, unfortunately, it isn’t going to be a fad, it is going to be around for a very long time.

But I wasn’t exaggerating when I said “Relationships are forever” and when I told you about the solution to all this confusing computer stuff. The truth is, the only reason any of this stuff works, is because at some point along the way, people decide they are going to trust the people at a brand or organization they need to buy a solution from. And, it is a lot easier to build that trust when, (1) you act like a human and (2) you treat people like humans.

Which means there is nothing inherently wrong with ads, or programatic marketing, or the way you buy the ads (ideally getting the right and relevant ad in front of the right person). But, it will help significantly if your goals, strategies, tactics, and media all keep “building trust with people” at the center.

What happens next?

There is still no magic bullet. I don’t have a secret shortcut to share with you, but I am going to keep talking about how to keep trust, relationships, and people at the center of our strategies.

Subscribe to the ongoing conversation.

I’m thinking about diving into these topics next. Which sounds most interesting to you?

1. What we measure changes our behavior [vote]
2. How to have personal conversations at scale [vote]
3. Advertising like a human [vote]