![Introduction
“The entire ecosystem of media and advertising is transforming […] that requires robust data and
analytics and better real-time planning and buying” believes Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s
global brand officer. The analysis of the world’s biggest advertiser is representative for many other
brands today, which all are starting to embrace one new programmatic way of media buying; Real-
Time Bidding, short RTB. This summarized academic paper aims at globally analyzing the
opportunities RTB offers for brand communication, allowing brands to improve their evaluation of
the technology and consequently judging its importance to their communication mix.
Purpose of the Document
The purpose of this document is to summarize the key findings of my Bachelor Thesis about the
opportunities of Real Time Bidding for digital brand communication. Based on these findings, I
offer several recommendations for brands on how to best cope with the technology from a short-,
mid- and long-term perspective. Due to the fact that the original academic work underlying this
summary has been formulated in French, this document serves as an insight into the results
especially for any non-french readers.
Florian ECKART, Reims, June 21th
2016](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/6c27c3b9-1073-4e2b-b97d-7a0cab7da89a-160917101439/85/Exec-Summary-Thesis-ECKART-Florian_FINAL-2-320.jpg)
Exec Summary Thesis-ECKART Florian_FINAL
- 1. 1 Real Time Bidding What are the opportunities for digital brand communication ? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – BACHELOR THESIS ACADEMIC YEAR 2015-‐‑2016 B.Sc INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT DOUBLE DEGREE ESB BUSINESS SCHOOL, GERMANY NEOMA BUSINESS SCHOOL, FRANCE FLORIAN ECKART N E O M A B U S I N E S S S C H O O L – C A M P U S R E I M S
- 2. Introduction “The entire ecosystem of media and advertising is transforming […] that requires robust data and analytics and better real-time planning and buying” believes Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand officer. The analysis of the world’s biggest advertiser is representative for many other brands today, which all are starting to embrace one new programmatic way of media buying; Real- Time Bidding, short RTB. This summarized academic paper aims at globally analyzing the opportunities RTB offers for brand communication, allowing brands to improve their evaluation of the technology and consequently judging its importance to their communication mix. Purpose of the Document The purpose of this document is to summarize the key findings of my Bachelor Thesis about the opportunities of Real Time Bidding for digital brand communication. Based on these findings, I offer several recommendations for brands on how to best cope with the technology from a short-, mid- and long-term perspective. Due to the fact that the original academic work underlying this summary has been formulated in French, this document serves as an insight into the results especially for any non-french readers. Florian ECKART, Reims, June 21th 2016
- 3. Academic Approach The research conducted on this work’s topic is structured in secondary and primary research concluding by a comparison of both parts. The following paragraph gives an overview about its applied methodology. The first part of this paper elaborates on the secondary research, which is based on an analysis of the current economic and social developments that fuel the need for a better performing and more personalized digital communication. As part of this analysis, the key drivers for digitalization in our current society are analyzed: the strong growth in E-commerce sales as well as the changing consumer behavior. Based on the results of these trends, the technology RTB itself is introduced, followed by an analysis of its forces and eventual limitations based on this previous research. The resulting conclusions about the opportunities of RTB for brand communication, as presented by the professional press and academic papers, serves as a hypothesis. Subsequently the whole digital communication ecosystem is thoroughly analyzed, in order to create a better understanding of the impact the arrival of RTB had on the market for digital advertisement. In this process, the value chain of RTB is decomposed, ranging from advertisers on the demand side to publishers on the supply side, enabling a complete analysis of the media buying process via RTB. The second part of my thesis introduces the methodology applied for primary and secondary research. The specific topics treated across all eight expert interviews with selected professionals are summarized, drawing from the conclusions of the secondary research. These interviews with professionals from various organizations, which are all part of the RTB ecosystem, offer deep insights in the current application of RTB, the challenges faced and resulting key learnings. The analysis of these interviews served as a basis to the final synthesis, allowing an answer to my thesis: “Real-Time Bidding - What are the opportunities for digital brand communication?” The last section compares the results of primary and secondary research in order to identify the opportunities of RTB for digital brand communication. As a result, the paper concludes by answering its underlying question and by giving personal recommendations on the strategic approach of RTB for brands.
- 4. Key Findings Based on the comparison of secondary and primary research, the answer to the academic question of the summarized paper leads to the conclusion that Real Time Bidding presents a paramount technology to the transformation process from media to audience planning for digital brand communication, but remains restricted in its application as of today. The conducted research has shown that RTB and its digital ecosystem enable a significant improvement of targeting capabilities, which, above all, increases the performance of digital communication on a large scale. For the first time, it is now possible to synchronize first party data, which lies in the possession of brands, with second party data collected by publishers, allowing digital targeting to heavily improve target profiles and thus the precision of its communication. This is why, according to my research, the greatest opportunity offered by RTB lies in the exploitation of the technology for conversion-related objectives, first and foremost e-commerce. Thanks to its capability to optimize and personalize campaigns automatically “In-Flight”, meaning “real-time”, RTB renders digital communication much more attractive from a performance view, especially compared to the now outdated Direct Sales model. As usage of online phenomena like Ad blockers constantly keep growing, RTB represents an answer to the consumers’ wish for more relevant digital advertisements by combining the opportunities of synchronizing different data types with optimizing and personalizing campaigns “In-Flight” at the same time. Furthermore, the conducted research allows putting RTB in context with the entire range of digital channels currently existent in digital communication, in particular search and social media. Due to the extraordinary growth of RTB in the last few years, the technology is often praised as the up and coming main channel of digital communication. However, research conducted in this paper did refute this projection: Despite the remarkable opportunities mentioned above, RTB only represents a complimentary digital channel for the moment. Due to its limits, especially concerning branding objectives, conversion remains its only effective field of application, since the technology focuses on targeting consumers in the “Customer Decision Journey”, who have already further advanced on their path to purchase. Following this logic RTB rather channels demand than creating it, which is why brands have to complement it with other digital channels. One channel that many experts expect to soon gain more importance in this context is Programmatic Guaranteed, which is expected to unleash larger investments of branding budgets in Programmatic. Thus my research leads to the conclusion that RTB has to be considered as a necessary channel in the digital communication mix of each brand nowadays. Nevertheless, marketers need to be aware of the technology’s limits in order to properly adapt it to their brand’s communication needs.
- 5. As to these limits of RTB, marketers need to have a good understanding of the complex ecosystem surrounding the technology. Many brands and experts complain about the persisting lack of transparency concerning the composition of costs and data treatment. Consequently, it has become essential for marketers to anticipate these issues and communicate their importance to all digital partners in order to enable a sound exploitation of RTB. Continuous improvement of the understanding of the given technology is absolutely necessary in order to enable communication on a par and, thus, allowing marketers to anticipate these issues. The following chapter offers recommendations, which aim to outline strategic approaches on how to ensure such a continuous improvement and, thus, allowing to create a more solid digital expertise on brand side. Recommendations Knowledge equals power in the industry of digital communication, in the short-term. As of today, the RTB ecosystem is extremely fragmented and highly inefficient, posing different challenges to marketers when trying to exploit RTB. Due to the complex ecosystem, brands are depending on their digital partners, especially agencies. In order to find solutions to the lack of transparency concerning price creation and data treatment, it is paramount for brands to become more critical of their digital service providers. However, this is impossible without the proper knowledge of the RTB technology and understanding of the related ecosystem, which is why, in the short-term, brands need to follow the maxim “knowledge equals power”. By intensifying collaboration with their partners, brands need to make the point that it is also in the interest of their service providers to share knowledge and improve understanding of their clients. As part of this joint knowledge- sharing, brands should focus on the opportunities of campaign management through “In-Flight” data, as well as the functioning of synchronization of first and second party data. In my opinion, this approach begins with more extensive pre-campaign preparation, more frequent in-campaign reports and exhaustive in-depth post-campaign analysis. Obviously, marketers have to prioritize the time invested in learning the functioning of the different channels, especially since digital remains only a part of the communication mix for many brands after all. Nevertheless, digital is the future for every brand and the extent to which RTB and programmatic have grown globally over the last years, justifies an increased degree of attention. Furthermore, brands should not hesitate to look for expertise externally in form of consultants on the topic as, for example, evoked by one expert. Another form of learning more about RTB is represented in professional training or conferences by organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Long-term brands need to create expertise in-house and assume control of RTB. Since programmatic has already started to automate large parts of digital advertisement and, thus, erase
- 6. many inefficiencies, brands need to engage in a more holistic management of their digital communication, including RTB. Technically, this will mean the arrival of services like SAP Media Exchange, which aims to consolidate all functions along the RTB value chain in order to simplify campaign management. Furthermore, SAP aims at proposing a software allowing marketers to assume control by managing their campaigns themselves via an application. In order to anticipate these technological shifts in the RTB ecosystem, brands have to start identifying these new players now and establish a continuous process allowing for the selection of the best suited offer on the market. In order to adapt recruiting to this new reality, brands also have to reevaluate their definition of the marketer’s profile in collaboration with human resources. As argued above, the marketer’s responsibility for digital communication is going to move closer to the operative campaign management, which, in effect, is going to demand increased technological and analytical skills from marketers. Therefore, the consideration of the before mentioned factors is paramount to the redefinition of recruiting criteria for future marketers in order to assure fostering of the necessary digital expertise on a brand level.
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