(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Digital media has become a standard component of any advertising campaign. The amount of money invested behind digital advertising campaigns keeps increasing year on year. Statistics from many markets show that between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of advertising budgets are being invested in digital media. The remainder of these budgets is spread between other media types such as TV, print, outdoor, radio, etc.
The UK has been leading on this front for several years as over 50 per cent of UK-based advertising budgets are being invested in digital media. Many developed markets namely the US, China, Japan and Germany are closing the gap with similarly high percentages. The global ad spends on media in 2016 is expected to reach between $520 billion and $550 billion as projected by three different industry sources: Magna Global, Zenith Optimedia and WPP's Group M. Furthermore, it was also reported that the share of digital media will be circa $180 billion, or 35 per cent of the global ad spend. Unlike traditional media the digital media landscape is very complex. It involves tens and sometime hundreds of websites, mountains of inventories, continuously changing components and growing demand. Numerous media planning and buying tools that include action-based real-time bidding (RTB) and ad exchanges market places have been introduced, creating an even more fragmented universe where programmatic buying is the holy grail. Programmatic buying is the algorithmic solution that accommodates the media selling and buying process from multiple market places in real-time using data and technology. It is no different than a marketplace of other commodities where the rules of supply and demand dominate. On the supply side a multitude of inventories are made available to would-be buyers who wish to advertise to their target audience at the right time. The additional component is the technology stack that allows buyers and sellers to more efficiently manage the increasingly complicated digital realm, while data provides insights to improve planning and targeting accuracy. The ad industry and their clients have embraced programmatic buying for the many merits it offers. Efficient targeting, cost and time are but a few merits one can mention. As such the importance of this practice has been constantly growing. For perspective, over 30 per cent of the global digital media ad spends estimated at $180 billion in 2016 will be conducted via programmatic buying. On a related note I would like to touch on the growing belief that digital media will eventually annihilate traditional media. To those who carry this belief, I hasten to add that traditional media is here to stay but in a different shape. Historically traditional media vehicles used to be the source of all sorts of information that people chose to access their preferred content - be it general news, sports, fashion, entertainment and much more. Digital media did not change this fundamental need but has rather changed the way people access their preferred content and today people are increasingly going online to seek information for their preferred content. To accommodate this behavioral change, owners of traditional media vehicles are rapidly evolving their business models and are embracing the migration of their content onto digital media platforms. How successful will these efforts be and what are the repercussions of this transition on various stakeholders, is a topic that deserves special attention in its own right. The writer is Vice President Operations Mena at BPN. Views expressed by him are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.
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